The First Thanksgiving: Home Edition

You can only imagine that the first Thanksgiving feast wasn’t prepared in a five-star kitchen, or even a kitchen at all for that matter. Colonists had the bare essentials for most everything needed for day to day life. The earliest houses in Plymouth had thatched roofs, dirt floors, split wood to make thin boards called clapboards for the walls and a prominent fire and chimney area, since this was the only source of heat as well as the only way to cook. Each house also had its own garden, where vegetables and herbs could be grown during the appropriate seasons.

images courtesy of www.plimouth.org

Image courtesy of www.plimouth.org

The colonists were assigned land plots that were approximately 50 feet deep. The width of the lot was approximately 8 feet multiplied by the number of members in the family — so a family of six would have received a plot of land that was 50 feet by 48 feet.

It usually took somewhere between two to three months to make one of these clapboard houses, from the framing of it, to covering it with clapboards and finally the thatching of the roof. Although, these particular roofs didn’t last very long due to the fact they’re more likely to catch on fire, so the colony leadership eventually passed a law that required new homes to be built with plank instead.

Image courtesy of www.storiesofusa.com

Eventually the colonists were able to refine their home building skills by simple trial and error and rebuild homes much quicker after any type of devastation. They were also able to incorporate a “kitchen area” to not only prepare and cook their meals but to house dried goods.

So while historically, the original Thanksgiving was definitely different than how we celebrate today, both are fundamentally the same – to give thanks for what we have. Don’t forget to be thankful for the place you call home.

Happy Thanksgiving from Weber Design Group, Inc.

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” by Jennie Brownscombe