Was the first thanksgiving in St. Augustine, Florida? Experts seem to think so
Retired University of Florida archaeologist Kathleen Deagan Ph.D. with her team at the St. Augustine site believed to be where the first thanksgiving was held.
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - The first-recorded Thanksgiving didn’t take place with the pilgrims and American Indians at Plymouth, experts say. It actually took place in St. Augustine in 1565.
Retired University of Florida archaeologist Kathleen Deagan Ph.D. told FOX 13 Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and hundreds of Spanish settlers founded St. Augustine decades before the Pilgrims stepped foot in New England.
"When Jamestown was founded, St. Augustine was ready for urban renewal," she explained.
According to the National Park Service, as soon as they were on shore, they celebrated a “Mass of Thanksgiving.” Menendez also invited the native Seloy tribe as guests. They originally occupied the site.
“The celebrant of the mass was St. Augustine’s first pastor, Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the feast day in the church calendar was that of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What exactly the Seloy natives thought of those strange liturgical proceedings we do not know, except that, in his personal chronicle, Father Lopez wrote that “the Indians imitated all they saw done,” according to the NPS website.
As for their meal, it’s believed the Spaniards and Native Americans consumed cocido, a stew made from salted pork, garbanzo beans, and garlic seasoning, and accompanied by hard sea biscuits and red wine.
“If the Seloy contributed to the meal from their own food stores, then the menu could have included turkey, venison, gopher tortoise, mullet, drum, sea catfish, maize (corn), beans, and squash.”
The feast took place about 300 yards north of the Castillo de San Marcos, and experts say it was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent European settlement on the continent.
Deagan said she discovered what is believed to be the site of where those Spaniards established in the Native American town, but her team couldn’t quite pinpoint to the “exact table where the first thanksgiving” took place.
"We found evidence that was absolutely the first encampment," she explained."They wanted to have the very moment they stepped on land a massive thanksgiving."
She said her former colleague Michael Gannon first suggested that the first thanksgiving was in St. Augustine – which caused some backlash in Plymouth, Massachusetts. City officials even called a special meeting and the Boston Herald compared Gannon to the “Grinch who stole Thanksgiving.”
Gannon passed away in 2017.
“I would love to see the history of Thanksgiving in third-grade textbooks as happening here in St. Augustine,” Deagan said. “I think it will help refine our understanding of the roots of American culture, too."
LINK: You can learn more about Florida's role in the first thanksgiving on the NPS website.