The price of a Thanksgiving turkey dinner at a restaurant remained surprisingly steady for many years in the late 1800s. In 1876, San Bernardino residents could get a complete Thanksgiving dinner including turkey stuffed with oysters, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin, lemon, or custard pie, for 25 cents at the Arcade Hotel. In the larger cities, many residents in the late 1800s ate Thanksgiving dinner at a hotel restaurant. ![]() They cannot fly and weigh up to 40 pounds. Today, the broad-breasted white turkey is the most widely used breed of commercially raised turkeys. The total human population of the state at that time was about 550,000. In 1869, California’s production records showed 157,228 turkeys being raised on poultry ranches, as compared to 1,459,069 chickens. Turkey production in California grew steadily through the late 1800s, but it lagged behind the eastern and Midwest states. Also, most turkey fans don’t know that a male turkey is a tom or gobbler, a young male is a jake, females are hens, a young female is a jenny, and babies are a poult or chick. Unlike their domesticated brethren, wild turkeys are excellent short-distance fliers, and they are good sport for hunters. Wild turkeys were first introduced into California in 1877, by private ranchers on Santa Cruz Island for game hunting. Turkey was a favorite meat for Europeans long before the Plymouth feast, and local wild turkeys were a plentiful source of food for Native Americans and the New England settlers.Ĭalifornia’s early settlers didn’t have wild turkey as an option for their Thanksgiving feasts, since the birds were not native to the region. In the latter half of the 1800s, Thanksgiving was frequently referred to as “turkey day,” and in 1885, Congress made the celebration a paid federal holiday for all U.S. In 1863, a proclamation by Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national “day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. ![]() Austin wrote a fictional account of the 1621 feast in her book “Standish of Standish: A Story of The Pilgrims.”Īustin’s description didn’t mention the malnutrition and deaths at the Plymouth Colony that winter, but her account was popular and it became the foundation for other writing, public plays and events, and eventually, school curriculum. ![]() The traditional image of a feast, complete with stuffed turkey and numerous other dishes, took root in 1889 when noted American author Jane G. In the book, Hale writes “the roasted turkey took precedence on this occasion, being placed at the head of the table and well did it become its lordly station.” In 1827, author Sarah Josepha Hale devoted a chapter of her novel “Northwood a Tale of New England” to describing her ideal version of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
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