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Presidents Truman, Kennedy, Regan, Biden 
Sparing a turkey from a Thanksgiving table. The presidential Turkey Pardon

Massachusetts
is a truly historic state.
Indigenous people lived there for
over ten thousand years before it was
colonized by the English in the 17th century.
The 17th century brought a mass migration
of Puritan immigrants into the area
while the subsequent centuries
brought new waves of
immigrants.

Abraham Lincoln’s
son Tad got upset when
he found out someone was going to kill
the live turkey brought for the presidential
family’s Christmas dinner. Eventually Tad’s plea was admitted,
and the turkey’s life spared. Abraham Lincoln made
Thanksgiving an official
U.S. holiday in
1863.

A decade later
Rhode Island poultry dealer 
Horace Vose starts sending Thanksgiving 
and Christmas turkeys to the first families. Vose was the 
White House’s unofficial turkey provider for more than 
40 years after that first turkey to President 
Ulysses S. Grant, but by 1914, Americans 
from around the country were
sending live turkeys for 
the holidays.

                                                                          
William Bradford’s
journal was discovered and published 
by Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor.  
Hale was so taken with the story of that first Thanksgiving,
that she lobbied five U.S. presidents to make it a federal holiday. 
Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving an official U.S. holiday, 
an act he saw as a step toward reuniting the 
fractured country after the Civil War. 
He put it on the calendar for 
the last Thursday 
of November.

1941
December,
Franklin D. Roosevelt 
changed Thanksgiving to the fourth 
Thursday in November to avoid confusion  
where there is a fifth Thursday in 
November.

People 
often incorrectly 
date the official pardoning ceremony 
back to 1947 with Harry Truman, a myth 
that stems from the fact that the National Turkey Federation 
which runs the modern presidential turkey pardon 
ceremonies sent a president a turkey for the 
first time that year. Truman 
didn’t spare that bird’s life
he ate it.
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