The Truth About The Mayflower and the First American Thanksgiving

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Through my genealogical research, I recently discovered that both my husband and I are Mayflower descendants. Our ancestors were both on the Mayflower, over 400 years ago. Eerie coincidence!!

As a researcher, I needed more information on this. I knew the basic story of Thanksgiving from school, books, and movies. But I also knew much of it was not the complete truth.

We were taught many myths and legends about the origin of Thanksgiving. One was Charlie Brown’s cartoon “This is America, Charlie Brown”, a very simplified version of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims.

We think of the Pilgrims as a collective group of people who arrived in America in 1620 and celebrated their first Thanksgiving…