She never sought fame. All she wanted was to keep her family afloat—but her tireless work would change American culture. In this little-known story, discover how one widow’s faith gave America Thanksgiving.
Sarah Josepha Hale was born in 1788 on a New England farm, the daughter of an officer in the American Revolution. Sarah was homeschooled by her mother in a time without formal education for women. Her brother would also bring home his books from Dartmouth and teach her Latin, Greek, literature, rhetoric, and geography.
She married a local attorney and, settling into domestic life, had four children in quick succession. While pregnant with her fifth child, her husband developed pneumonia and died suddenly. Sarah was left destitute. Now a single mom, she opened a hat shop to support her family but without success.
She turned to the writing she’d begun while home with her children, selling some poems. When she published a book, she gained the attention of an Episcopal reverend who hired her as editress at the newly launched Ladies’ Magazine where she became the first female editor of a magazine in the U.S. This is about the time Sarah published a book of children’s poems which included a little poem we know as Mary Had a Little Lamb.
That alone should get you in the history books, but Sarah Josepha Hale’s most enduring legacy was still to come.
When the Ladies’ Magazine was bought out and renamed Godey’s Lady’s Book, Sarah stayed on as editor. Under Sarah’s savvy direction, the monthly magazine became the largest antebellum journal in circulation, far outpacing The Saturday Evening Post and read by men and women across the United States.
The magazine reflected Sarah’s values like women’s education in an age when there were no schools or colleges for women. She also esteemed women working at home, coining the term “domestic science” and devoting articles each month to homemaking. And as daughter of a Revolutionary War officer, she prized love of country and cultivated a distinctly American culture through the magazine’s short stories and articles.
These values fueled her passion to see America celebrate a nationwide Thanksgiving holiday. For four decades, Sarah published editorials, wrote hundreds of letters, and lobbied vigorously for a national Thanksgiving Day.
Sarah envisioned a Thanksgiving celebration founded in Christian values that would strengthen family and country. She opened an 1858 editorial proposing Thanksgiving Day with lines from a hymn:
All the blessings of the fields,
All the stores the garden yields,
All the plenty summer pours,
Autumn’s rich, o’erflowing stores,
Peace, prosperity, and health,
Private bliss and public wealth,
Knowledge with its gladdening streams,
Pure religion’s holier beams—
Lord, for these our souls shall raise
Grateful vows and solemn praise.
Thanksgiving would be a day of “joy and gratitude to the Divine giver of all our blessings.”
After four presidents ignored her requests to recognize Thanksgiving, Sarah wrote to President Lincoln in 1863 asking him to proclaim that last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving. Choosing a Thursday was intentional, because it would give women time to prepare a large feast and recover before Sunday. (She wasn’t wrong.) Her letter met its mark. Five days after the letter, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring a “day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
It’s significant that Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving not when the country had attained peace but in the midst of civil war. Three months earlier, the bloodiest battle in American history had taken place at Gettysburg. Yet, Lincoln noted specific blessings happening in America that compelled gratitude for “the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”
Thanks to the tireless efforts and faith of a widow and single mom, America has recognized Thanksgiving Day on a Thursday every November for 162 years. And fun fact: we can also thank her for the roasted turkey and pumpkin pie on our tables, recipes she published in Godey’s Lady’s Book to campaign for Thanksgiving.
Just as Sarah Josepha Hale envisioned, Thanksgiving is a day that brings country and family together in gratitude under the same principle that President Lincoln introduced. We can give thanks even as our country navigates conflict or we are personally walking through suffering because of the ever-watchful hand of Almighty God.
Sources:
1858 editorial from Godey’s Lady’s Book by Sarah Josepha Hale
1863 Letter to President Abraham Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale
Davidson College, How One Influential Woman Made Thanksgiving an American Tradition (2023)
Giving Thanks for Sarah Josepha Hale, Melanie Kirkpatrick (November 22, 2022)
Missing in History: Sarah Josepha Hale—The Most Influential Magazine Editor in America, Nancy Rubin Stuart (July 7, 2025)
Proclamation of Thanksgiving, Abraham Lincoln (October 3, 1863)
Sarah Josepha Hale, Patricia Okker, EBSCO.com (2023)
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