Over the river and through the woods
Did you know those lyrics were written by a woman, Lydia Maria Child--who went by Maria, who was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1802? She wrote it in 1845 after being involved in the anti-slavery movement.
She had been a successful author but upon writing a book against slavery, she and her husband (also anti-slavery) became unpopular and lived on the edge of poverty for years.
Maria received a letter from a wife of a Virginia senator who defended slavery as a benevolent institution. She pointed out that Southern women were kind to slaves when they gave birth. Maria responded that northern women also were kind to women in childbirth, but "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies."
Maria helped an ex-slave, Harriet Jacobs, publish her memoirs and later edited an anthology of prominent African-American writers. All this while her Thanksgiving song was being sung, and before Thanksgiving was a national holiday, though the idea was becoming more popular.
At the end of 1863, a year of bitter losses for both North and South at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chancellorsville, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a national holiday "to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." A time for families to make that trek over a battle-scarred land to give thanks to God.
(The information about Lydia Maria Child and Thanksgiving are from the November 2003 issue of "Guideposts")
Over the river and through the woods
Did you know those lyrics were written by a woman, Lydia Maria Child--who went by Maria, who was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1802? She wrote it in 1845 after being involved in the anti-slavery movement.
She had been a successful author but upon writing a book against slavery, she and her husband (also anti-slavery) became unpopular and lived on the edge of poverty for years.
Maria received a letter from a wife of a Virginia senator who defended slavery as a benevolent institution. She pointed out that Southern women were kind to slaves when they gave birth. Maria responded that northern women also were kind to women in childbirth, but "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies."
Maria helped an ex-slave, Harriet Jacobs, publish her memoirs and later edited an anthology of prominent African-American writers. All this while her Thanksgiving song was being sung, and before Thanksgiving was a national holiday, though the idea was becoming more popular.
At the end of 1863, a year of bitter losses for both North and South at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chancellorsville, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for a national holiday "to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." A time for families to make that trek over a battle-scarred land to give thanks to God.
(The information about Lydia Maria Child and Thanksgiving are from the November 2003 issue of "Guideposts")