It seems that holidays always send me searching through the old diaries of my family. I hope to find all kinds of fascinating details about how they spent those special days. For this Thanksgiving season, I went looking for some mention of all the delicious food that undoubtedly covered the tables for family and friends on Thanksgiving Days of more than a century ago.

But it doesn’t always work out that way. In those days, the weather was uppermost in their minds, just as it is for holiday travelers of today.

My great-grandmother’s diary of 1896 had some interesting entries for November, starting with Nov 3. – “Pleasant. Great day for the election. Good news. McKinley elected.”

In the days that followed, Dorcas Field noted some rainy weather with the first snow squalls on Nov. 13. It was cold the next day, which was her birthday, and she wrote, “Fifty years old – half a century. Oh my, how old I do feel.” Her much-appreciated gifts were a pair of shears, an apron, and a cup and saucer.

Four days later she said, “Warm as summer,” and she talked about the guests who would come for Thanksgiving a week later.

Nevertheless, more snow came, and her dairyman brother Ern “went on runners today.” She added, “I went to church in the sleigh. It was good sleighing.”

On Thursday, Nov. 26, she said, “There were 12 of us for Thanksgiving. We had a good time but, oh, how I missed father.”

There was another old diary I looked at. My grandfather, who would marry Hattie Field, daughter of Dorcas and David P. Field, some years later, was still in Methuen, Mass., and they had not met. His diary in 1898 said, “Cut oak logs day. Came home to eat Thanksgiving dinner. Cleaned up the rest of the dry beans. We got about 100 quarts.” It sounded like an appropriate prelude to the life he would spend as a woodcutter and farmer at Echo Farm in Auburn.

Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the specific menu my ancestors enjoyed many years ago.

However, I learned that family celebrations of Thanksgiving in 1896 were a matter of significant local interest. The Lewiston Evening Journal of Friday, Nov. 27, had three columns of dinner listings with names of the guests from oldest to infant.

“It was a characteristic snowy Thanksgiving day, with enough congelated mist to make fair slipping, and the sleighbells jingled just a trifle on some of the back streets,” the news account said.

“In the Thanksgiving dinner at Mr. George G. Knapp’s, College Street, Lewiston, where Miss Sarah Frye, Miss Tew and Miss Hebson were guests, was the menus printed with pen and ink on regular menu paper by Miss Lizzie Knapp, a daughter of the host,” the report said. “A fine photograph of the house termed Knapp Hall headed the bill of fare which was very nicely executed.”

The newspaper noted that “Mr. and Mrs. F.H. Briggs of Auburn entertained 23 on Thursday, among them being Senator and Mrs. Frye, and you may be sure that this table, famed for its hospitality and abundant cheer, in no way failed on the feast day. It was one of the happiest Thanksgiving spreads in the community.”

Congressman Nelson Dingley and his family dined with Mrs. F.L. Dingley in Auburn with “a party of 17 sitting at the table.” It also was reported that four generations gathered at the Frye Street home of Capt. George D. Armstrong in Lewiston.

The news was not just about the big parties of local politicians and businessmen.

“Miss Eliza Dearing of Bethel came down to pass the day with her mother” and “Miss Alice M. Ingraham was the guest of the Misses Saunders.” The listing went on to say, “Mr. Edward A. McIlheron of Lewiston was at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Old Ladies Home at Deering Thursday and passed the day with his mother.”

Thanksgiving was not complete in 1896 without an appearance at the evening dance or the theater. The newspaper took note that about 100 couples went to the dance at Lewiston City Hall. It was said, “The floor was just a trifle prodigal in wax, but the music was good.”