National Thanksgiving Proclamation as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610. In 1619, the Berkeley Hundred colony held a service on December 4, 1619, to celebrate “the day of our ship’s arrival” and proclaimed the date would be “yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to the Almighty God.” The colony was wiped out shortly after, in March 1722, with some inhabitants being massacred, and the rest fleeing. The generally referenced 'First Thanksgiving' occurred on Plymouth Colony, shortly after the colonists first successful harvest in autumn of 1621. They celebrated for three straight
History of St. Augustine, Florida Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to go to Florida and establish a center of operations from which to attack the French. Pedro Menéndez's ships first sighted land on August 28, 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo. In honor of the patron saint of his home town of Aviles, he named his colony's settlement "San Agustín". The Spanish sailed through the inlet into Matanzas Bay and disembarked near the Timucua town of Seloy on September 6. Menéndez's immediate goal was to quickly construct fortifications to protect his people and supplies as they were unloaded from the ships, and then