Sorry Plymouth, First Thanksgiving Really Happened in Virginia

A Virginia landmark is reminding Americans that the nation’s first official English Thanksgiving didn’t happen in Plymouth—but two years earlier along the James River.

On December 4th, 1619, Captain John Woodlief and 37 English settlers arrived at Berkeley Hundred, where they held a religious day of thanksgiving, as ordered by the Virginia Company of London. Unlike the feast often associated with the Pilgrims, this was a solemn prayer service giving thanks for safe passage across the Atlantic.

The tradition lasted only two years before the deadly Powhatan attack of 1622 devastated the settlement, and the event faded from public memory for centuries. It wasn’t until 1963 that President John F. Kennedy formally recognized Berkeley Plantation as the site of America’s first English Thanksgiving.

Today, the story lives on through the annual Virginia Thanksgiving Festival, held each November at Berkeley Plantation. The event features historical reenactments, including the settlers’ landing on the James River. Visitors to the plantation can also explore the elegant 1726 Georgian mansion—birthplace of President William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and tour a museum filled with colonial, Native American, and Civil War artifacts. The grounds also hold a special place in military history: during the Civil War, Union General Daniel Butterfield composed the bugle call “Taps” right there at Berkeley.