Dear friends:

Do not believe our misinformed carpet bagger friends from the northern states who claim that The First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 after they had arrived on the famous Mayflower a year earlier.  It ain't so.

Let the truth be known: The First Thanksgiving was Celebrated in Virginia!

See http://www.virginia.org/site/features.asp?FeatureID=50. An excerpt:
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Come see where it all began! Visit Virginia's Berkeley Plantation, and see where English colonists first held a thanksgiving celebration, one year and 17 days prior to the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts!

They Gave Thanks for their Safe Arrival in the New World

The first Thanksgiving occurred when Captain John Woodlief led the newly arrived English colonists to a grassy slope along the James River and instructed them to drop to their knees and pray in thanks for a safe arrival to the New World.

On this day, Dec. 4, 1619, these 38 men from Berkeley Parish in England were given the instructions:

"Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God."

This saying is now carved on a brick gazebo, where it is believed that Woodlief knelt down beside the James River.

Visit Berkeley Plantation and tour the grounds, gardens and three-story manor house built in 1776. See this birthplace of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and of his son, the ninth U.S. President William Henry Harrison. Harrison's grandson, another Benjamin Harrison, became the 23rd U.S. president.
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The Virginia settlers arrived at what is now Virginia Beach, at Cape Henry, in 1607.  They stayed only a few days then sailed up the nearby James River to avoid the pirates prowling the Atlantic.  There they established Jamestown, the first permanent European settlement in North America.  Twelve years later, in 1619, over a year before the Pilgrims landed, they proclaimed the first annual Thanksgiving.  It may have taken that long to learn their lesson -- the first few years were devastating in terms of disease and starvation.

That's the truth!

Have a happy thanksgiving.

Jim