Sarah Josepha Hale: NH's Mother of Thanksgiving

Of all holidays we celebrate, none has a greater tie to New Hampshire than Thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, a NH author, activist, and editor is often credited as the force behind the creation of the modern Thanksgiving.

Of all holidays we celebrate none has a greater tie to New Hampshire than Thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, a NH author, activist and editor is often credited as the force behind the creation of the modern American Thanksgiving.

We all learned that kind Native Americans taught the struggling English colonists how to survive in the harsh New England winter . The Wampanoag people and the Mayflower colonists had a three day feast in 1621 to celebrate. That story faded in to memory with other such moments, and became confused with the 1637 Thanksgiving decreed by Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop to mark a victory over the Pequots. Fast forward 200 years: The US was about to be torn apart in a brutal Civil War over slavery. Sarah Hale had advocated for a national holiday since 1846, lobbying Presidents Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln. But, in the darkness of the Cilvil War her appeal to Lincoln convinced the president to call for a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863. Lincoln saw the new holiday as a way to heal the wounds of the Civil War.

So who was Hale? She was the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Hale raised funds to complete the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. She was born in Newport, NH, and was an advocate for women’s right to work and study.