Thanksgiving (United States) The most prominent historic thanksgiving event in American popular culture is the 1621 celebration at the Plymouth Plantation, where the settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Autumn or early winter feasts continued sporadically in later years, first as an impromptu religious observance and later as a civil tradition. The Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, had settled in land abandoned when all but one of the Patuxet Indians died in a plague. After a harsh winter killed half of the Plymouth settlers, the last surviving Patuxet, Squanto (who had learned English and avoided the plague as a
English colonial grants in North America (1621–1639) English colonial grants in North America (1621–1639) This article provides a listing and map of English colonial grants in North America during the years 1621 to 1639. Grants prior to 1621 (and not shown on the map) include Sir Humphrey Gilbert's 1578 grant for Newfoundland, the Society of Merchant Venturers, the London and Bristol Company, the Virginia Company (the London Company and the Plymouth Company) and the Plymouth Council for New England. The previously existing Jamestown, founded in 1607 by the London Company, is denoted as J. Such grants were usually in the form of land patents, which specified the