George Washington's Original Thanksgiving Proclamation $8-$12 Million

by Stephen J. Gertz

The original manuscript proclamation establishing the first federal Thanksgiving Day in the United States of America is being offered by Christie's-New York on Thursday evening November 14, 2013 in a  single-lot special event sale. Signed by George Washington on October 3, 1789 it is estimated to sell for $8,000,000 - $12,000,000.

The proclamation reads in full:

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation

    Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."

    Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

    And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

    Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Prior to its sale, the proclamation will be on tour, exhibited October 17-20 in Los Angeles at the Reagan Library; October 22 in Dallas at the Harlan Crow Library; October 24 at Christie's-Chicago; October 30 in Boston; November 4 in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress; November 5 in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center; and November 7-13 in New York at Christie's Galleries.

The proclamation followed the request to President Washington by the House and Senate, on the day after ratification of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution, to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty God." Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey said that he “could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them" (The Annals of the Congress, The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States 1, Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, pp. 949–950).

Massachusetts Centinel, October 14, 1789.

This was not the first time that a day of thanksgiving had been proclaimed. On October 11, 1782, John Hanson, first president of the newly independent United States under the Articles of Confederation, declared the fourth Thursday of every November to be a national Thanksgiving Day. The holiday, however, was by the authority of each state, not the national government. Under the new Constitution it was to be a federal holiday.

But not an annual observation. George Washington again proclaimed a Thanksgiving Day in 1795. John Adams declared Thanksgiving Days in 1798 and 1799. In response to resolutions in Congress at the close of the War of 1812, James Madison renewed the tradition in 1814 and 1815. But it was not until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day on October 3, 1863 to occur in November of that year that the holiday has been annually celebrated.

Washington's proclamation is a foundational document in the history of the United States of America's grand national tradition of Thanksgiving. One of the great documents of Americana, it's no turkey.

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Document images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

Newspaper clipping courtesy of the Washington Post, with our thanks.
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The Radical Firebrand Behind America's Favorite Thanksgiving Poem

By Nancy Mattoon

Is there any American holiday more old-fashioned and more traditional than Thanksgiving? And does any bit of poetry sum up its virtues better than these familiar verses?

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
for 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood-
oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
as over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood
and straight through the barnyard gate.
We seem to go extremely slow-
it is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood-
when Grandmother sees us come,
She will say, "O, dear, the children are here,
bring a pie for every one."

Over the river, and through the wood-
now Grandmothers cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

These words were originally published as a poem, entitled A Boy's Thanksgiving Day, in 1844. The woman who wrote them, Lydia Maria Child, was best known at that time for writing the first cookbook in America which was produced for the middle class and the poor. Until the publication of The Frugal Housewife (1829), cookbook writers assumed their reader was a wealthy lady of the manor with servants, cooks, and perhaps even slaves.

The Frugal Housewife,
Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy.
By Lydia Maria Francis Child.
Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1830.
(Image Courtesy of Michigan State University Libraries.)

The Frugal Housewife, later entitled The American Frugal Housewife to avoid confusion with a British book of the same name, was the 19th century equivalent of The Joy of Cooking. In the New England Quarterly, historian Herbert Edwards describes it as "one of the most popular . . . books published in New England in the 1830's.... it had gone through fourteen editions by 1834, and for years continued to be one of the most treasured books of the average New England household." According to Michigan State University's excellent website devoted to historic American cookbooks, "The book went through at least 35 printings between 1829 and 1850 when it was allowed to go out of print because of the publication of newer, more modern cookbooks and also because of Mrs. Child's increasingly public work in the cause of anti-slavery."

That last part is a bit of an understatement. In 1833 Lydia Maria Child, a woman, published the first book-length, full-scale analysis of slavery in the United States, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. It was, says the Michigan State website, "so comprehensive [in] scope that no other antislavery writer ever attempted to duplicate Child's achievement; all subsequent works would focus on individual aspects of the subject that Child covered in eight thoroughly researched and extensively documented chapters." It was also radical enough, and shocking enough, coming from America's best-loved culinary writer, that it caused Child to be ostracized from Boston society, and caused the children's magazine she edited to go bankrupt, as well as leading to the out-of-print status of her best-seller. Nobody wanted Martha Stewart to do an about face, and begin writing inflammatory political manifestos.

Radical Firebrand Lydia Maria Child, c.1870.
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)

The truth is, the woman who wrote that charming ditty we trot out every Thanksgiving was a radical free thinker who was at least a hundred years ahead of her time. In 1824 she published her first novel, Hobomok, A Tale of the Times, in which a Puritan woman marries a Native American, and bears his child. The book's plot is melodramatic, but its depiction of an interracial marriage was amazingly daring. Child was a lifelong advocate of Native American rights when such an opinion was extremely unusual and wildly unpopular. In 1868 she published An Appeal for the Indians, which demanded that the government, and religious leaders, bring justice to the American Indian.

Frontispiece From:

An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,
By Mrs. Child.
Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833.
(Image Courtesy of University of Michigan Clements Library.)

Lydia Maria Child made no bones about her belief in full equal rights for Native Americans, African Americans, and women. Although she did not write feminist literature, reasoning that racial inequality needed to be addressed before the inequality of the sexes, she demonstrated that a woman could write and publish books beyond the domestic realm. She was the first American female ever to make a living solely as a writer.

Even Child's famous cookbook was in many ways a radical text. She sees the home as a miniature economy, in which time, materials, and labor must be as carefully allocated as in any business or factory. The subtitle of The Frugal Housewife was: Dedicated To Those Who Are Not Ashamed Of Economy. In her introduction she tells those women "who can afford to be epicures," to put down her book and pick up Eliza Leslie's cookbook, Seventy-five Receipts For Pastry, Cakes, And Sweetmeats (1832). A reverse "let them eat cake" dismissal of the upper class readers that Child disdained. A vocal critic of The Frugal Housewife was a former suitor of Child's, Nathaniel P. Willis, who found the book a total betrayal of her class, "full of vulgarisms, indelicate references to animal body parts, and an apparent fondness for foods highly despised by genteel readers." A truly well-bred female would never have demeaned herself by writing about money.

Image From The Title Page of:
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,
By Mrs. Child.
Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833.
(Image Courtesy of University of Michigan Clements Library.)

Lydia Maria Child is remembered today for her Thanksgiving poem, which conjures up a nostalgic vision of the perfect old-fashioned holiday. But her real legacy is as a zealous and tireless crusader against the horrific injustices which were so easily accepted by most members of her race and class. If you are of a more liberal persuasion, but are spending the holiday with conservative friends or relatives, why not suggest a sing-along featuring Child's famous lyrics? Your fellow celebrants will think you've gone all warm, fuzzy, and traditional. And only you will know they are all singing the phrases of one of America's greatest and most uncompromising radical writers.

To all seekers of equality and justice, a Happy Thanksgiving from Booktryst.

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Journal of the Pilgrim Fathers a Reason to Give Thanks

by Cokie Anderson

Title page and frontispiece of the Golden Cockerel Press Pilgrim Fathers (1939)

In Pertelote, the bibliography of the Golden Cockerel Press from October 1936 - April 1943, the partners of the press express their surprise that this account of the Pilgrims' journey to America and their subsequent travails there, "printed from an exceedingly rare volume [from 1622] in the British Museum, did not attract more attention among our American patrons. We know them to be interested in history: must it only be history other than their own?"

The text here was edited by Theodore Besterman (1904-76), an interesting character described by the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) as a "psychical researcher and bibliographer," not a combination one sees every day. Born in Poland, he grew up in Britain, and claimed to have educated himself at the British Museum Library. He was interested in psychic phenomena, and from 1927-35 he served as the investigating officer for the Society for Psychical Research, where his sometimes critical writings on the subject of mediums and spiritualism caused the Society's most prominent adherent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to resign in protest. In the 1930s, he devoted himself more wholeheartedly to bibliography, lecturing on the subject at the London School of Librarianship and penning the classic The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography (1935).


Besterman's interest in American history, familiarity with the collections of the British Library, and participation in the private press movement (he had a short-lived press of his own, the Guyon House Press, which was destroyed in the air raids of 1940) made him a ideal choice to edit this 140th publication by the Golden Cockerel Press. Founded in 1920 with the intention to print fine editions of important well-known books as well as new literary works of merit from young authors, the Golden Cockerel Press was purchased in 1924 by the illustrator and wood-engraver Robert Gibbings. "Under his direction," says press historian Roderick Cave, the press was "transformed into the principal vehicle for the renaissance of wood-engraved book illustration that took place in the years between the wars."

One of Geoffrey Wales' striking illustrations

The wood engravings in Pilgrim Fathers are by Geoffrey Wales, an art teacher pleased to accept a low fee in order to have his illustrations published. Cave describes them as very much in keeping with the subject matter and the typeface (Poliphilus) chosen for the book, being "deliberately 'rough' and chapbook-like." Gibbings and his partners felt that this was "one of the nicest books we have ever made--agreeable in its proportions, tasteful binding, beautiful paper, elegant typography, and exceptionally pleasant and dextrous engravings, all harmonizing with the charming content."

Denise Lubett's cartographic binding for Pilgrim Fathers

In the copy shown here, the original black morocco-backed paper baords have been replaced by a striking binding that at first glance does not seem to be pictorial; however, upon closer inspection, the clever tan-on-gray-green design presents a clear, if stylized, resemblance to the coastline of Massachusetts, at least as it was understood by the Dutch mapmakers of the first half of the 17th century. The area depicted comprises the coastline from Cape Cod northward through Boston into the southern portion of Maine, and the cartographical delineation corresponds to Blaeu's "Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova," which first appeared in 1635. It is the work of Denise Lubett, who studied bookbinding under John Corderoy at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and at the London College of Printing. She set up her own binderies in England and France in 1966. More restrained that Lubett's usual colorful and flamboyant work, this unusual cartographic binding is an excellent match to the design and spirit of the contents.

This book represents some of the things I am most thankful for in this season of gratitude: fine printing, private presses that preserve that art and craft, beautiful bindings and the artisans who create them, people who love books, and last but far from least, the country that emerged from those pilgrims' original quest for freedom.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Besterman, Theodore. The Pilgrim Fathers. (Golden Cockerel Press, 1939) 254 x 165 mm. (10 x 6 1/2").3 p.l. (including the frontispiece), 7-87, [1] pp., [1] leaf (blank). One of 300 copies. With eight woodcuts by Geoffrey Wales. Pertelote 140; Cave & Manson 140 and pp. 147-49.
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All images courtesy of Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books & Manuscripts.
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