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
John Carver (Plymouth Colony governor) John Carver (Plymouth Colony governor) John Carver (before 1584–1621) was one of the Pilgrims who braved the "Mayflower" voyage in 1620 which resulted in the creation of Plymouth Colony in America. He is credited with writing the Mayflower Compact and was its first signer, and he was also the first governor of Plymouth Colony. Little is known about Carver's ancestry or early family life. Jeremy Bangs notes that Carver and his wife Mary were members of the French Walloon church in Leiden, Holland on February 8, 1609. The French Huguenot community was fleeing adverse events in their homeland, as were