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 slavery in Iowa History of slavery in Iowa During the early exploration, the area of what is now Iowa was part of New France and, as such, was governed by its slavery laws. French settlers first brought African slaves into the Upper Louisiana from Saint-Domingue around 1720 under the legal terms of the Code Noir, which defined the conditions of slavery in the French empire and restricted the activities of free Black persons. At the time, nine hundred slaves lived in the territory, as well as at least three hundred slaves the French took with them as they left for the lands west