husetts or Connecticut. It is
difficult to state when the feast became a fixed annual observance in
New England. In the year 1742 were two Thanksgiving Days.

Rhode Islanders paid little heed in early days to Thanksgiving--at any
rate, to days set by the Massachusetts authorities. Governor Andros
savagely prosecuted more than one Rhode Islander who calmly worked all
day long on the day appointed for giving thanks. In Boston, William
Veazie was set in the pillory in the market-place for ploughing on the
Thanksgiving Day of June 18, 1696. He said his king had granted liberty
of conscience, and that the reigning king, William, was not his ruler;
that King James was his royal prince, and since he did not believe in
setting apart days for thanksgiving he should not observe them.

Connecticut people, though just as pious and as prosperous as the Bay
colonists, do not appear to have been as grateful, and had considerable
trouble at times to "pick vppon a day" for thanksgiving; and the
festival was not regularly observed there till 1716.

Thanksgiving was not always appointed in early days for the same token
of God's beneficence. Days of thanks were set in gratitude for and
observance of great political and military events, for victories over
the Indians or in the Palatinate, for the accession of kings, for the
prospect of royal heirs to the throne, for the discovery of conspiracy
for the "healing of breaches," the "dissipation of the Pirates," the
abatement of diseases, for the safe arrival of "psons of spetiall use
and quality," as well as in gratitude for plentiful harvests--that "God
had not given them cleannes of teeth and wante of bread."

The early Thanksgivings were not always set, upon Thursday. It is said
that that day was chosen on account of its reflected glory as lecture
day. Judge Sewall told the governor and his council, in 1697, that he
"desir'd the same day of the week might be for Thanksgiving and Fasts,"
and that "Boston and Ipswitch Lectures led us to Thorsday." The feast of
thanks was for many years appointed with equal frequency upon "Tusday
com seuen-night," or "vppon Wensday com fort-nit." Nor was any special
season of the year chosen: in 1716 it was appointed in August; in 1713,
in January; in 1718, in December; in 1719, in October. The frequent
appointments in gratitude for bountiful harvests finally made the autumn
the customary time.

The God of the Puritans was a jealous God, and many fasts were