"We have sweet Potatoes by the whole sale, and Wild game of almost every description; we do not have to set apart one day, expressly for Thanksgiving in order that we can get something nice, for we have a continued one through out the year." --Amanda Trulock, Nov. 29, 1837

Amanda Trulock wrote this passage during her first year on her husband's plantation in Georgia. Her family in Bridgeport, Conn., celebrated Thanksgiving every year; in the South, she found that it was barely acknowledged. Amanda's marriage happened to coincide with the year that Sarah Josepha Hale became editor ("editress" in her own words) of Godey's Lady's Book and began to advocate for Thanksgiving's establishment as a uniform national holiday.

Louis Godey started Godey's Lady's Book as a monthly magazine in 1830. (In 1845, he began to copyright his material in order to keep other magazines and newspapers from reprinting it, and was widely criticized for doing so.)

By 1860, the magazine had 150,000 subscribers, the most of any monthly magazine in the country. (The population of the U.S. was about 31 million at the time; it now is about 342 million, and top-ranked Better Homes and Gardens has about 3 million subscribers.)

Godey's contained poems, stories, historical sketches,........

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