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Dear Friends,
I wrote this for an email in November of 2007 on one of the main reasons we should be thankful for Thanksgiving. It also is imperative that we remember to pray for our country. Remember the Feast of the Immaculate Conception is coming soon. She is our country's patroness! -novena at the end of article:
"St. Augustine, Florida is the site of the first REAL Thanksgiving that was actually 55 years before the Thanksgiving at Plymouth - the basis of our traditional Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving at St Augustine took place on September 8th, 1565 (Nativity of Our Lady). On that date, Fr Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales planted a cross in the sand and celebrated the first parish Mass. Afterward, a meal of thanksgiving was enjoyed by the Spanish settlers and Tumucuan Indians together.
A book called "The Cross in the Sand" written by Michael Gannon describes the events. Here is a quote from the synopsis of this book :
"Ponce de Leon who discovered Florida in 1513 was a Catholic layman. Priests sailed with Ponce on his second voyage in 1521. And on six subsequent Spanish explorations to the Florida shoreline between 1521 and 1565 priests came to raise the Cross in the sand, and to offer unnumbered masses on wilderness altars.
The Spanish settlement of Florida was followed by the evangelization of the Indians, a work that continued uninterrupted for two centuries. The success of the missionaries is evidenced by the fact that less than 100 years after the founding of Saint Augustine, 26,000 Christian Indians were living under the sound of mission bells between Saint Augustine and Tallahassee, and along a second line northward to Saint Catherines Island. Their villages bore such names as Name of God, Holy Faith, Saint Joseph, Saint Francis, Holy Cross, Ascension, and Our Lady of the Rosary.
The history of Florida and of the American nation began with this positive contribution, the gallant effort of Spanish missionaries to improve the spiritual and material condition of the American Indians.
Curiously, that important story has been relatively unknown to most Americans. Now, in this fascinating book, it is told in its entirety for the first time.
These pages also recount the tragic end of the Florida missions; the temporary collapse of Catholic life during the British Period and its reappearance among Minorcan immigrants; the establishment by the Church of Florida's (and the nation's) first schools and hospitals, the schism of Saint Augustine's Church Wardens in the 1820's and 1830s; the coming of Florida's first bishop, Augustin Verot, in 1858, and his devoted labors on behalf of both white and Negro Floridians during the Civil War and after."
Also Quoting from the book 'The Spanish Missions of La Florida':
"In the old domains of La Florida, from St Catherines Island in the north to St. Augustine in the south, from Amelia Island in the east to Tallahassee in the west, historical archaeologists, with historians at their elbows, have been retrieving the remains of a mission system that dotted Florida's shore and hinterland like strands of rosary beads nearly two centuries before the better-known missions of California."
These two books are excellent sources of information and could be used as a supplement when teaching about American History …or even just for good old fashioned Catholic Education of yourself and your children. I know I spent 12 years in Catholic school system and never heard of any Catholic history like this until I began to use a Catholic Homeschool Curriculum.
Two websites to learn more about this topic are: www.missionsanluis.org , www.missionandshrine.org "
I found this in a website that was written by the author and wanted to update you on his writings.
We Gather Together…
by Michael Gannon, Ph
When on September 8, 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his 800 Spanish settlers founded the settlement of St. Augustine in La Florida, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, and, afterward, Menéndez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site.
The celebrant of the Mass was St. Augustine’s first pastor, Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the feast day in the church calendar was that of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What exactly the Seloy natives thought of those strange liturgical proceedings we do not know, except that, in his personal chronicle, Father Lopez wrote that “the Indians imitated all they saw done.”
What was the meal that followed? Again we do not know. But, from our knowledge of what the Spaniards had on board their five ships, we can surmise that it was cocido, a stew made from salted pork and garbanzo beans, laced with garlic seasoning, and accompanied by hard sea biscuits and red wine. If it happened that the Seloy contributed to the meal from their own food stores, fresh or smoked, then the menu could have included as well: turkey, venison, and gopher tortoise; seafood such as mullet, drum, and sea catfish; maize (corn), beans and squash.
What is important historically about that liturgy and meal was stated by me in a 1965 book entitled The Cross in the Sand: “It was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent [European] settlement in the land.” The key word in that sentence was “permanent.” Numerous thanksgivings for a safe voyage and landing had been made before in Florida, by such explorers as Juan Ponce de León, in 1513 and 1521, Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528, Hernando de Soto in 1529, Father Luis Cáncer de Barbastro in 1549, and Tristán de Luna in 1559. Indeed French Calvinists (Huguenots) who came to the St. Johns River with Jean Ribault in 1562 and René de Laudonnière in 1564 similarly offered prayers of thanksgiving for their safe arrivals. But all of those ventures, Catholic and Calvinist, failed to put down permanent roots.
St. Augustine’s ceremonies were important historically in that they took place in what would develop into a permanently occupied European city, North America’s first. They were important culturally as well in that the religious observance was accompanied by a communal meal, to which Spaniards and natives alike were invited.
The thanksgiving at St. Augustine, celebrated 56 years before the Puritan-Pilgrim thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation (Massachusetts), did not, however, become the origin of a national annual tradition, as Plymouth would. The reason is that, as the maxim holds, it is the victors who write the histories.
During the 18th and 19th centuries British forces won out over those of Spain and France for mastery over the continent. Thus, British observances, such as the annual reenactment of the Pilgrims’ harvest festival in 1621, became a national practice and holiday in the new United States, and over time obliterated knowledge of the prior Spanish experiences in Florida, particularly at St. Augustine. Indeed, as the Pilgrims’ legend grew, people of Anglo-American descent in New England came to believe that Plymouth was the first European settlement in the country and that no other Europeans were here before the arrival of the Mayflower – beliefs that are still widespread in that region.
In recent years, Jamestown, Virginia has enjoyed some success in persuading its Anglo-American cousins in Plymouth that it was founded in 1607, thirteen years before the Pilgrims’ arrival, and that there were regular ship schedules from England to Jamestown before the Mayflower’s voyage of 1620. Furthermore, Berkeley Plantation near Charles City, Virginia, has convincingly demonstrated that it conducted a thanksgiving ceremony on December 4, 1619, nearly two years before the festival at Plymouth. Thought to have been on Berkeley’s menu were oysters, shad, rockfish, and perch.
Along the old Spanish borderlands provinces from Florida to California an occasional voice is heard asserting that this site or that was the first permanent Spanish settlement in the United States – a claim often made in Santa Fe, New Mexico which was founded in 1610 – or that it was the place where the first thanksgiving took place. An example of the latter claim appeared last year in the New York Times, which, while recounting the colonizing expedition of Juan de Oñate from Mexico City into what became New Mexico, stated that celebrations of Oñate’s party in 1598 “are considered [the Times did not say by whom] the United States’ first Thanksgiving.”
The historical fact remains that St. Augustine’s thanksgiving not only came earlier; it was the first to take place in a permanent settlement. The Ancient City deserves national notice for that distinction.
Perhaps most of New England is now willing to concede as much, though that was not the case in November 1985, when an Associated Press reporter built a short Thanksgiving Day story around my aforesaid sentence of 20 years before in The Cross in the Sand. When his story appeared in Boston and other papers, New England went into shock. WBZ-TV in Boston interviewed me live by satellite for its 6:00 p.m. regional news program.
The newsman told me that all of Massachusetts was “freaked out,” and that, as he spoke, “the Selectmen of Plymouth are holding an emergency meeting to contend with this new information that there were Spaniards in Florida before there were Englishmen in Massachusetts.”
I replied, “Fine. And you can tell them for me that, by the time the Pilgrims came to Plymouth, St. Augustine was up for urban renewal.”
The somewhat rattled chairman of the Selectmen was quoted as saying: “I hate to take the wind out of the professor’s sails, but there were no turkeys running around in Florida in the 1500s. But there may be a few loose ones down there now at the University of Florida.” So there!
Within a few days of the tempest a reporter from the Boston Globe called to tell me that throughout Massachusetts I had become known as “The Grinch Who Stole Thanksgiving.”
Well, let’s hope that everyone up north has settled down now.
And let’s enjoy all our Thanksgivings whenever and wherever they first began.
Dr. Michael V. Gannon is a Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Florida. He has had a long interest in the early Spanish missions of Florida about which he has written extensively. Two of his books, Rebel Bishop (1964) and The Cross in the Sand (1965) treat of the early history of this state.
In 1990, Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, conferred on Dr. Gannon the highest academic honor of that nation, Knight Commander of the Order of Isabel la Católica.
Excerpt above taken from:
https://www.staugustinelighthouse.org/2009/11/25/americas-first-thanksgiving-in-our-nations-oldest-port/
Lastly, it would be good to read George Washington's Proclamation on Thanksgiving. And even say a prayer of thanks for having created this Feast Day of Thanks for our country. It has been recorded that George Washington was a deathbed Catholic and he may be in need of prayers for the repose of his soul.
"Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord...."
Evidence can be read:
https://catholicism.org/washington-slaves.html
http://gloriaromanorum.blogspot.com/2017/02/did-george-washington-die-catholic.html
Please continue to pray for our country:
https://www.ourladyofgoodsuccess.com/pages/9-day-novena-to-our-lady-of-good-success
Please do pass this along to all of your family and friends and email lists as we truly need souls to join us!!!
God bless and keep you always!
"Star of the Stormy Sea of my mortal life, may your light shine upon me so I do not stray from the path that leads me to Heaven."
(From the Last Will and Testament of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres)
The Apostolate of Our Lady of Good Success
1288 Summit Ave Suite 107
Oconomowoc, WI. 53066
phone 262-567-0920
website: www.ourladyofgoodsuccess.com
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