Sarah Josepha Hale: The Woman Who Made Thanksgiving a National Holiday
Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for 57 years. The mourning began in 1822 when her husband David died suddenly, leaving her pregnant with their fifth child and with four young children, nearly penniless. She was 34 years old. The black dresses never stopped, but something unexpected happened in those decades of grief: Hale became the most influential woman in 19th-century America, reshaping everything from women’s education to the very calendar itself.
Most Americans have never heard her name. Yet she wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” convinced Abraham Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, raised funds to complete the Bunker Hill Monument, and edited the most widely read magazine in the country for 40 years. Her 17-year campaign to establish Thanksgiving stands as one of the most successful advocacy efforts in American history, driven by a widow who refused to let personal tragedy define her limits.
Born in Newport, New Hampshire in 1788, Sarah Josepha Buell grew up in a household that believed daughters deserved the same education as sons. While her brother Horatio attended Dartmouth College, Sarah studied at home with her mother and later with Horatio himself, who shared everything he learned. She taught school at 18, then married lawyer David Hale in 1813. He encouraged her writing, discussing academic questions with her and nurturing the intellectual partnership she craved.
Then came October 9, 1822. David’s death shattered that world. Sarah later recalled being left poor, explaining that the change added nothing to her grief but that for her children she was deeply distressed, knowing there was no money for their education. Her husband’s Freemason lodge helped publish her first book of poems, The Genius of Oblivion, in 1823. Four years later, her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England created a sensation as one of the first novels published by an American woman and one of the first to condemn slavery.
The book’s success brought an offer she couldn’t refuse and couldn’t easily accept. Reverend John Lauris Blake wanted her to edit a new publication called Ladies’ Magazine in Boston. The catch: she would have to leave four of her children behind with relatives. She accepted, bringing only her youngest son William. Friends were horrified by her decision. A widow leaving her children to work? Scandalous.
Hale transformed American publishing. In her debut issue of Ladies’ Magazine in January 1828, she wrote that no experiment would have greater influence on society than granting females the advantages of systematic and thorough education. That November, she introduced her second conviction: women needed employment and aims that would make them less dependent on marriage for support. By 1837, Louis Godey offered her the editorship of Godey’s Lady’s Book, where she would remain for four decades.
The magazine’s circulation exploded to 150,000 readers by 1860, making it the most influential periodical in the country. Hale published Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and promoted American writers over European reprints. She strongly advocated for female doctors, supported the early movement for women’s higher education, and championed institutions like Vassar College. Everything she touched seemed to succeed.
But one project consumed her more than any other: creating a national Thanksgiving holiday.
In 1827, her novel Northwood included an entire chapter celebrating the New England harvest tradition. The feast featured roasted turkey at the head of the table, sending forth rich odors of savory stuffing, accompanied by huge plum puddings and pies of every description known in Yankee land. The tradition resonated deeply with Hale, who saw it as something uniquely American and untainted by European influence.
The problem was that Thanksgiving existed as a patchwork of regional celebrations with no fixed date. Individual governors declared Thanksgiving days whenever they pleased, resulting in festivities scattered across autumn months or even as late as March. Some states didn’t celebrate at all. Hale believed a unified national day of thanks could bind the fractured country together.
Starting in 1846, she began her campaign in earnest. Every year, Godey’s Lady’s Book published editorials urging a national Thanksgiving. Hale wrote to every state governor. She wrote to every sitting president: Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. All ignored her pleas.
Then came the Civil War. As the nation tore itself apart, Hale believed a national day of Thanksgiving would draw families and the country closer together. In 1862, Union victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh strengthened her resolve. Hale saw her opportunity.
On September 28, 1863, Sarah Josepha Hale wrote to President Lincoln. The letter, preserved in the Library of Congress, began with careful deference. She requested a few minutes of his “precious time” to lay before him a subject of deep interest and importance: establishing an annual, national Thanksgiving as a fixed Union festival.
For the past 15 years, she had set forth this idea in Godey’s Lady’s Book and placed papers before governors of all states and territories. But legislative obstacles remained insurmountable without presidential action. She noted that a proclamation from the President would be the best, surest, and most fitting method of national appointment, openly linking the holiday with the war effort by calling it fitting and patriotic to hold Thanksgiving as a great Union festival.
Hale suggested the last Thursday in November. That year, it would fall on November 26, giving just enough time for state appointments if Lincoln acted quickly. She had already written to Secretary of State William Seward, requesting his support.
Five days later, Lincoln responded. On October 3, 1863, Lincoln issued his proclamation declaring the last Thursday of November to be a national day of Thanksgiving. He urged Americans to pray for peace and harmony amid a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity. Seventeen years of Hale’s persistence had finally succeeded.
Hale’s editorial in the next issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book celebrated the victory. According to archived documents, she wrote that it was the peculiar happiness of Thanksgiving Day that nothing political mingled in its observance, calling it by its very nature a religious and domestic holiday. Lincoln issued another proclamation in 1864, and the tradition seemed secure.
Then Franklin Roosevelt nearly destroyed it.
In August 1939, with Depression-era America still struggling economically, FDR announced that Thanksgiving would move one week earlier. The reasoning was largely commercial. November 1939 had five Thursdays, meaning the traditional last Thursday fell on November 30, leaving only 24 shopping days until Christmas. Retailers were anticipating one of the worst shopping periods in many years following economic downturns in 1937 and 1938.
Roosevelt explained that many parties wanted the earlier date and that there was nothing sacred about the traditional observance. The announcement sparked immediate uproar. Atlantic City Mayor Charles White coined the term “Franksgiving,” which quickly caught on. Alf Landon, Roosevelt’s Republican challenger in 1940, called the declaration another illustration of the confusion which Roosevelt’s impulsiveness caused, comparing it to the omnipotence of Hitler.
That fall, 22 states celebrated Franksgiving on November 23. Another 23 states celebrated on November 30. Texas, Colorado, and Mississippi decided to observe both dates. College football teams had scheduled rivalry games for the traditional date and now played in empty stadiums or not at all. Calendar makers found their products suddenly obsolete. Families were torn apart by which date employers recognized. A late 1939 Gallup poll showed 62% of Americans opposed the change.
Roosevelt repeated the experiment in 1940 and 1941, but the chaos only intensified. Postal workers in some states, including Nebraska, were required to work on a day their families celebrated as a holiday. The confusion created exactly the kind of national discord that Sarah Hale had spent 17 years trying to prevent.
In 1941, Time magazine reported that Roosevelt admitted he was wrong. Under the headline “President Admits Mistake,” the magazine described reporters holding their breath as Roosevelt picked up a memorandum and acknowledged his error. Congress quickly passed a joint resolution fixing Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, rather than the last Thursday as Lincoln had proclaimed.
Roosevelt signed the law on December 26, 1941, ending the three-year Franksgiving confusion. The change was subtle but important: in years with five Thursdays, the fourth Thursday comes a week earlier than the last Thursday, providing retailers with the extra shopping days Roosevelt had wanted without the chaos of presidential whims determining the date annually.
Sarah Josepha Hale retired from Godey’s Lady’s Book in December 1877 at age 89. She died two years later in Philadelphia, having shaped American culture in ways few people could claim. Beyond Thanksgiving, her advocacy supported the establishment of Vassar College, helped preserve George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, founded the Seamen’s Aid Society to support impoverished sailors’ families, and published some of the most notable American writers of the 19th century.
Yet she remains largely forgotten today. Perhaps that’s fitting for someone who believed in what she called the secret, silent influence of women. Hale promoted women’s education and employment opportunities but opposed women’s suffrage, believing women should shape society through moral influence rather than political power. Her views on race were complicated: she wrote anti-slavery novels yet supported the deeply flawed Liberia colonization plan. She published women writers and supported female doctors while simultaneously reinforcing traditional gender roles.
The contradictions don’t diminish her impact. Every November, more than 150 years after Lincoln’s proclamation, Americans gather around tables laden with turkey and stuffing, continuing the tradition one widowed magazine editor spent nearly two decades fighting to create. They rarely know her name. They don’t realize that the holiday was almost destroyed by a president trying to boost Christmas shopping.
The Thanksgiving we celebrate today exists because Sarah Josepha Hale refused to accept that a woman’s voice couldn’t change the nation. She wrote thousands of letters. She published annual editorials for 17 years. She lobbied five presidents before one finally listened. She linked the holiday to national unity during the country’s darkest hour, giving Lincoln a tool to remind Americans of what they shared rather than what divided them.
History tends to remember presidents and generals, not magazine editors writing letters from Philadelphia. But traditions don’t emerge from grand proclamations alone. They require someone with vision, persistence, and the patience to keep trying when everyone else has given up. Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for 57 years, but she spent those decades painting American culture in colors that still define us today.
And with that, Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃
