Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

[MORTARDUDE]

Originally Posted by Keith_Hixson

My wife is a Mayflower descendant. So we remember Thanksgiving a little differently. She knows that if John Alden and Priscilla Mullins hadn't survived that first winter, she wouldn't be alive today. So, my wife is very grateful to the Native folks who helped them and showed them how to farm and harvest fish. Contrary to eveyone's opinion of deer and turkey, the main survival protein for the Pilgrins was fish and shell fish. 51 of the 104 passengers died that first winter, they didn't have any natives helping them until the spring. That First Thanksgiving they had venison, turkey, duck, fish, shell fish, plus the corn and squash they grew. It was quite a feast for folks who almost starved to death. That first winter they lived on the Mayflower and not on shore. Probably the tight living quarters spread disease rapidly. What no one can figure out is why they left in September and didn't have enough food supplies to take them through the winter, just doesn't make sense. Of course they were planning on staying in Virginia or somewhere in the Carolina's. Probably thought that they could rummage up more food than they did. But, over half did survive. Enough to establish a little town.

["They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports." - William Bradford's, First Governor of the Plymouth Colony, report of the First Thanksgiving.]

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Keith

I hope everyone had a great holiday !!! My neighbor, when I lived in Bartlett, TN, before my divorce, was also a Mayflower descendent. His last name was Soule. I found his last name while doing some genealogical work at our main library. I asked him, and he said oh yes, it was no big deal........go figure.

Larry