Plymouth Colony most of them in two or three months' time". By November 1621, only 53 pilgrims were alive to celebrate the harvest feast which modern Americans know as "The First Thanksgiving". Thirteen of the 18 adult women died the first winter, while another died in May. Only four adult women were left alive for the Thanksgiving. Several of the graves on Cole's Hill were uncovered in 1855; their bodies were disinterred and moved to a site near Plymouth Rock. The autumn celebration in late 1621 that has become known as "The First Thanksgiving" was not known as such to the Pilgrims.
Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony) in Boston. A song composed for the occasion used the word "Pilgrims", and the participants drank a toast to "The Pilgrims of Leyden". The term was used prominently during Plymouth's next Forefather's Day celebration in 1800, and was used in Forefathers' Day observances thereafter. By the 1820s, the term "Pilgrims" was becoming more common. Daniel Webster repeatedly referred to "the Pilgrims" in his December 22, 1820 address for Plymouth's bicentennial, which was widely read. Harriet Vaughan Cheney used it in her 1824 novel "A Peep at the Pilgrims in Sixteen Thirty-Six", and the term also gained popularity with the 1825