Formal Thanksgiving celebrations in Monroe County, Alabama date back to at least the Reconstruction era

Ulysses S. Grant

Yesterday – Nov. 24 – was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has been celebrated on and off in America ever since 1789 when President George Washington issued a national proclamation declaring it a holiday. Thanksgiving became an official federal holiday in 1870 when Ulysses S. Grant signed into law the Holidays Act, and Congress in 1942 passed a law saying that the holiday would be permanently observed on the fourth Thursday of November.

Of course, Thanksgiving has been observed in Monroe County for a long, long time. Going back through old editions of The Monroe Journal, the earliest reference to Thanksgiving that I could find was in the Nov. 19, 1870 edition of the newspaper. In that week’s paper, readers saw under the headline “THANKSGIVING,” that “the President has appointed next Thursday as a day of thanksgiving and prayer.”

The President referenced in that small blurb was Ulysses S. Grant, who had a hand in having Thanksgiving first declared a national holiday. One should remember that this 1870 Thanksgiving came just a few years after the end of the War Between the States. No doubt some readers of The Journal at that time had fought against the federal army led by General “Unconditional Surrender” Grant during the war.

After the war, Grant led the nation during portions of Reconstruction, and during this time federal troops were stationed all over the south, including in Monroe County. These soldiers generally kept the peace, guarded government property and assured peaceable elections. As chance would have it, The Journal touches on these Reconstruction activities in the same edition that mentions Thanksgiving.

Just beneath the Thanksgiving announcement, under the headline “GONE,” it was reported that “the soldiers left us this morning. They went in the direction of Claiborne to take a boat to Mount Vernon arsenal.”

Mount Vernon Arsenal was a U.S. Army munitions depot located in northern Mobile County, not far from the Mobile River. The Army eventually turned the arsenal into a prison, and one of its most famous prisoners was the famous Apache leader, Geronimo. The prison was later turned into Searcy Hospital, a mental hospital that closed on Halloween in 2012.

Getting back to the subject of Thanksgiving, it should be noted that Thanksgiving in the 1870s was celebrated much differently than it is now. Back then, businesses didn’t typically close all day. Instead, business owners would usually agree to delay opening until around one o’clock in the afternoon.

This practice would allow employees and others to attend Thanksgiving church services. These services were usually of the union type, that is, worshipers of different denominations would meet for services at one church, where a local minster would deliver a special Thanksgiving sermon.

In the end, there have been over 150 Thanksgivings observed between that 1870 Thanksgiving in Monroe County and today. Some of those Thanksgivings fell during times of war, disease and economic hard times, and others fell during times of peace, health and prosperity. No matter the circumstances, we all have much to be thankful for. The Lord is always good to us.