The Puritans celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621, and for the next couple of centuries, the tradition belonged mainly to New Englanders. Then in 1863, with the Civil War raging and his Emancipation Proclamation freeing Southern slaves, President Abraham Lincoln made another proclamation: He declared Thanksgiving to be a national holiday.

Lincoln probably embraced the idea because he felt the war-torn country was in need of a patriotic celebration. Behind the scenes, he had a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale to thank for the idea.

Hale was the longtime editor of the very popular “Godey’s Lady’s Book,” wrote the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and campaigned tirelessly for what she called “a truly American festival.”

In her novel “Northwood,” published in 1827, she described a typical New England Thanksgiving, and wrote, “Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people.” For the next 30 years, she campaigned to make this happen, becoming more persistent as she saw her country tearing at the seams between North and South.

“Let the people of all the states and territories sit down together to the feast of fat things,'” she urged in a magazine editorial. She contacted president after president with her proposal until Lincoln began to see her point.

The year Thanksgiving was established as a national holiday, Maine Gov. Abner Coburn observed that “what was once peculiar to New England, has gradually extended over the land until, by the recent proclamation of the president, it has assumed a national character.”

In proclaiming the 1863 celebration of Thanksgiving in Maine, Coburn acknowledged that “the past year has been one of great and general affliction.” But he urged Mainers to “praise Almighty God that our borders have not been ravaged by desolating armies, and that in the midst of a gigantic civil war not only have agriculture, commerce and the mechanic arts flourished, but the interests of education, philanthropy and religion have not been neglected.”

In Farmington, as in many communities, Thanksgiving Day was marked by a Thursday church service.

“The several religious denominations will, as usual, unite in divine worship on that day,” said a local item in the Farmington Chronicle. Townspeople gathered at the Congregational Church on Main Street. Predecessor to the one on that site today, this was a smaller brick building with a wooden steeple surrounded by a white board fence. Townspeople gave thanks to God, and organizers took a collection for the benefit of sick and wounded Union soldiers.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past 10 years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, [email protected].