Thanksgiving Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history
History of Christianity in the United States most Christians in the United States are Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, or Roman Catholic. Because the Spanish were the first Europeans to establish settlements on the mainland of North America, such as St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, the earliest Christians in the territory which would eventually become the United States were Roman Catholics. However, the territory that would become the Thirteen Colonies in 1776 was largely populated by Protestants due to Protestant settlers seeking religious freedom from the Church of England (est. 1534). These settlers were primarily Puritans from East Anglia, especially just before the English Civil War (1641–1651); there were