Thanksgiving Timeline in America

• 1541 - Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, led a thanksgiving Communion celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon, West Texas.
• 1565 - Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 settlers gathered for a meal with the Timucuan Indians in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Florida.
• 1621 - Pilgrims and Native Americans celebrated a harvest feast in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
• 1630 - Settlers observed the first Thanksgiving of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England on July 8, 1630.
• 1777 - George Washington and his army on the way to Valley Forge, stopped in blistering weather in open fields to observe the first Thanksgiving of the new United States of America.
• 1789 - President Washington declared November 26, 1789, as a national day of "thanksgiving and prayer."
• 1800s - The annual presidential thanksgiving proclamations ceased for 45 years in the early 1800s.
• 1863 - President Abraham Lincoln resumed the tradition of Thanksgiving proclamations in 1863. Since this date, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.
• 1941 - President Roosevelt established the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day