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Sunday, November 22, 2009 9:53 PM CST
Lincoln Log Cabin volunteers plan Friday event of thanksgiving, prayer
By the JG/T-C
LERNA — Thanksgiving as a new national holiday will be the focus of an event Friday at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.
The “Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer” event will look at the holiday as it was celebrated after President Abraham Lincoln made his proclamation in 1863, site Manager Matthew Mittelstaedt said.
The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and there will be no charge for admission or for parking.
Mittelstaedt said activities at the farm site of Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, will show how people were finding ways to celebrate a holiday that wasn’t widely observed before. It won’t be a “turkey and stuffing” celebration, but a large meal including roasted venison will be prepared, he said.
Interpreters will also show “their pride in their family member,” the president who made Thanksgiving a national holiday, Mittelstaedt said. Thomas Lincoln died before his son became president, but a relative, John J. Hall, was farming the land in 1863.
Mittelstaedt said site leaders decided to focus on the new national holiday and the connection to Lincoln as part of the year-long observance of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
By 1845, the historical period usually portrayed at the site, the governors of many states outside of New England were issuing proclamations for official days of thanksgiving, but it wasn’t until the height of the Civil War that Lincoln proclaimed America’s first national observance of the holiday, according to information from the site.
When Lincoln signed the proclamation establishing Thanksgiving in October 1863, the nation was embroiled in the Civil War, but he said the country and its people still had much to be thankful for.
In his proclamation document, Lincoln said, “In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity… order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict.”
The historic site is located eight miles south of Charleston. More information on the site or Friday’s event is available by calling 345-1845 or at the Web site www.lincolnlogcabin.org.
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