Thanksgiving in Iowa Territory, 1846

Iowa still was a territory as Thanksgiving 1846 approached. (Statehood would arrive that year, but not until Dec. 28.)

In Lucas County, John and Hannah Ballard --- first settlers --- had brought their family to live in English Township during September. The Freeman Nickerson family party --- fleeing Nauvoo --- found refuge that fall, too, at Chariton Point. These were the only known residents of Lucas County that long-ago winter.

Iowa City had become the official territorial capital during 1841, replacing Burlington, but Gov. James Clarke (left) continued to make Burlington his home and it was from there that he issued his Thanksgiving proclamation:

By the Governor of the Territory of Iowa.

PROCLAMATION

Conformable to the request of many highly respectable persons belonging to the several religious denominations of the Territory, and in obedience to a venerable and generally approved of usage, I hereby name Thursday, the 26th Day of November Inst. as a day of general Thanksgiving throughout Iowa and recommend that it be celebrated by prayer, humiliation, and abstinence from secular employment.

It is meet on an occasion like the present, when as a people we are about assuming new and important responsibilities, that light and wisdom should be invoked from above. Moreover, the past year had been fruitful of blessings to our favored Territory, for which we have abundant cause to feel deeply grateful.

Thanks for our continued existence and prosperity as a community; for augmented human comforts; for health, and a bountiful yield of the necessaries of life; for the advance of learning, science and educational, for the onward march of the doctrines of christianity; for the triumph of our county's arms on the ensanguined field --- all these, and more, we are called upon to render.

The spectacle of a whole people voluntarily uniting on a particular day in a tribute of praise for the blessings they enjoy is one of the most impressive character, containing the best assurances of the durability and permanency of the liberal institutions under which we live.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto subscribed my name, and caused the Great Seal of the Territory of Iowa to be affixed, at Burlington, this sixth day of November 1846,

(Signed) James Clarke

By the Governor: Jesse Williams, Secretary of Territory

The several newspapers of the territory are requested to publish the above.

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The governor's proclamation was published in The Burlington Hawk Eye of Nov. 5, 1846. And then The Hawk Eye of Nov. 27 noted: "Today is set apart as a day of Thanksgiving throughout Iowa as well as a majority of other States.

"The Rev. Wm. Salter will deliver a discourse this day at 11 o'clock in the new meeting house on Fourth Street. As we have no doubt it will be appropriate and interesting we hope the house will be full.

"After the services a collection will be taken up in behalf of the poor."

Of course newspapers had not yet been dreamed of yet in Lucas County so we have no way of knowing if there were observances here in the Ballard or Nickerson households.