Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Who are you thankful for this year? Spouses, family and friends traditionally head the list of most folks. But there is one more person for whom we should all give thanks.

Sarah Hale was a housewife in the nineteenth century when women were considered “chattel” in a marriage. Chattel is property, the same as a horse, a house or a piece of furniture.  Women (and children) had very few rights and were considered second-class citizens.  Most could not vote, own property or decide the fate of their own children. 

Sarah had grown up on a small farm in New Hampshire. Her father was a disabled veteran of the Revolutionary War. She taught school to help out. One day, a lamb followed one of her students to school. She wrote a poem about it called “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” 

Sarah’s marriage was very happy, but her husband died young and she was left with five small children.  She took a job making hats to support her family and continued to write poetry and stories at night. She became the editor of a new magazine for women and published articles and stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Dickens.

 

All this should have been enough for any one woman, but Sarah was not satisfied with the world. Every month in her magazine she wrote editorials advocating education for girls, colleges for women, female doctors and for safe working conditions for all women. She despised slavery but was not allowed to write politically in her magazine.

That didn’t stop Sarah from getting things done. She took to heart the old adage that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” She published her articles and she wrote letters, thousands of them. When Sarah fixed on an issue, she picked up her pen and started writing to anyone she thought would be able to help. 

Sarah really loved Thanksgiving. It was an annual holiday in New Hampshire and the northeastern United States, patterned after the first thanksgiving celebration of the pilgrims. But it wasn’t a holiday in all the states and Sarah thought it should be. So she picked up her pen.

She started writing regularly to politicians throughout the states. She asked the readers of her magazine to write too, and housewives all over the country responded. They were pretty successful too. One by one, states began to declare a Thanksgiving holiday. But Sarah wasn’t satisfied. She wanted it to be a national holiday when everyone in the entire country would, on the same day, paused to give thanks.

So she wrote to the president, President Zachary Taylor to be precise. He said no. She waited and wrote to the next president, Millard Fillmore. Again, the answer was negative. So she wrote to Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan in turn. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone stopped on the fourth Thursday in November to give thanks? No luck.

         

Then came the Civil War. The country was torn apart. Sarah wrote to the man trying to pull it together.  And finally, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the fourth Thursday of November to be a national day of thanksgiving.

With a strong will and a ready pen, Sarah Hale helped establish a beloved holiday. One person can change the world, a lesson for us all. So this holiday, after you pick up that turkey leg, pick up your pen and write a letter about something you care about. Send it to someone who can help and then sit back and give thanks.

Historic Details from Thank you, Sarah by Laurie Halse Anderson.