Past Thanksgiving holidays

I'm drawing a blank about what my parents may have said about their Thanksgiving holidays.  And for myself as a kid, I don't remember much until I came home from my freshman year in college and found myself teary to see aunts and uncles and cousins all gathered for a big meal. I'm not sure we even had any traditions or styles of celebrating that needed to be blended.

I used to think, based on family Bible records, that my immigrant ancestors came around 1730. After starting genealogy a few years ago I found a few from England in the 1600s. I think they did miss the first Thanksgiving between colonists and native Americans.  My German ancestors had to sign pledges of loyalty to the King of England; the British and Irish who were already subjects didn't. There was a lot of discrimination against both Irish and Germans in the mid-19th century.--by the same groups that had come a generation or two before them. My grandmother whose family had come from the area of Europe that later became Germany had German immigrant women as household help.  It's my recollection from stories my mother told that Grandma thought they weren't very assimilated to our customs.  But when you're trying to fill up a country and find soldiers, the requirements were rather lax. The various church groups helped them resettle, just as today, if they didn't have family; no programs from the government. Some were indentured to pay for their passage, it was sort of like the coyote system of today bring people out of S.A. and Central America. Had to work many years to pay back the cost.

Most of the links from this page to other articles are broken, but this is a good explanation of other countries' observance of Thanksgiving. 

Attending church is a nice tradition--after all, God is the One to whom we give gratitude.