News from the Historical Society

One hundred years ago Woodrow Wilson was President and the November 5, 1913 issue of the Sigourney Review gave his “Thanksgiving Proclamation” front-page coverage:
“Washington, D. C. –President Wilson has designated Thursday, November 27 as Thanksgiving Day and issues the following – his first Thanksgiving proclamation:
‘The season is at hand in which it has been our long respected custom as a people to turn in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His manifold mercies and blessings to us as a nation. The year that has just passed has been marked in a peculiar degree by manifestation of His gracious and beneficent providence. We have not only had peace throughout our own borders and with the nations of the world, but that peace has been brightened by constantly multiplying evidences of genuine friendship, of mutual sympathy and understanding, and of the happy operation of many elevating influences both of ideal of practice.
The nation has been prosperous not only, but has proved its capacity to take calm counsel amidst the rapid movement of affairs and deal with its own life in a spirit of candor, righteousness and comity. We have seen the practical completion of a great word at the Isthmus of Panama which not only exemplifies the nation’s abundant resources to accomplish what it will, and the distinguished skill and capacity of its public servants, but also promises the beginning of a new age, of new contracts, new neighborhoods, new sympathies, new bonds and new achievements of co-operation and peace. 
Righteousness exalteth a nation and peace on earth, good will toward men furnish the only foundations upon which can be built the lasting achievements of human spirit. The year has brought us the satisfactions of work well done and fresh visions of our duty, which will make the work of the future better still.
Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the 27th of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and prayer and invite the people throughout the land to cease from their wonted occupations and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks to Almighty God.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the United States to be affixed.’”
For your further history lesson -President Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863. Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November and Congress ratified the decision in 1941. I guess I am just surprised they haven’t changed it to a Monday.