Learn about Abraham Lincoln’s establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday at the home of his parents, Thomas and Sarah Lincoln, on Friday, November 28th from 10am-4pm. Visit with the Lincoln family as they prepare for a Thanksgiving feast, mid-19th century style! The Goosenest Prairie Gift Shop, run by volunteers from the Lincoln Log Cabin Foundation, will be open during the event and features many new holiday items, including many locally-sourced products and a great selection of items handcrafted by Lincoln Log Cabin’s talented volunteers.
In 1789, George Washington became the first president to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation. Although Sarah Hale, the popular author and editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, tried for years to unify Americans around the holiday, Thanksgiving remained predominantly a regional or localized holiday until Abraham Lincoln revived Washington’s earlier tradition and issued a Thanksgiving proclamation during the Civil War in 1863.
In 1864, Americans rallied around Lincoln’s proclamation as they never had before. George Blunt of the New York Union League determined that all Union soldiers and sailors should have a Thanksgiving dinner complete with ‘ poultry and pies, or puddings, all cooked and ready for use.’ After his call for a collection of holiday food was made to the public, over 400,000 boxes of foodstuffs were shipped south to the army out of New York City alone. The comforts of home shared by American families were not forgotten at the end of the Civil War, and we’ve continued celebrating Thanksgiving on the 4th Thursday in November ever since!
I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
- from Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Thanksgiving, October 3, 1863
Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, a gateway site for the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area, was the 1840s home of Abraham Lincoln’s father and stepmother, Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln. It is located eight miles south of Charleston and 14 miles southeast of Mattoon, Illinois.
Thanksgiving on Goosenest Prairie is produced by Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site and the Lincoln Log Cabin Foundation. For more information about this or other events at the site, call 217-345-1845, email
aW5mbyB8IGxpbmNvbG5sb2djYWJpbiAhIG9yZw==, or visit www.lincolnlogcabin.org.
You may also like the following events from Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site:
Also check out other
Arts events in Lerna.
