Thanksgiving Virginia and a sparsely documented 1621 celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts. The 1619 arrival of 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, concluded with a religious celebration as dictated by the group's charter from the London Company, which specifically required "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned ... in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." The 1621 Plymouth feast and thanksgiving was prompted by a good harvest. Several days of Thanksgiving were held in early New England history
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