With Thanksgiving upon us, Alabamians may be interested to know when the holiday was first officially celebrated in the Yellowhammer State and its history here.

According to Alabama Pioneers, Thanksgiving wasn’t observed by the State of Alabama until 1858 when its governor along with the governors of Mississippi, Georgia, North  Carolina, and South Carolina proclaimed November 25th to be a “Day of Thanksgiving.”

A news source from the time period, The Daily Confederation, provided insight into what that day looked like in Montgomery, Alabama.

“Church services were well attended, but ‘the streets were almost unusually crowded with wagons, and that business houses had to work whether ‘they would or not,” the source read. “Our country friends overlooked the day, and came to town to trade, in great numbers. Cotton is King, and everything has to give way before his pale-faced majesty.”

Additionally, it may interest many to know that Thanksgiving was originally seen in the South by some as a ‘Yankee Abolitionist Holiday.’ This opinion was due to individuals involved in the movement conducting a letter-writing campaign to elected officials requesting a national day of Thanksgiving. As a result, specifically in 1853, large amounts of Southerners didn’t observe the holiday.

Adding to the disenchantment, was Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of a nationwide Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November. Due to it being in the middle of the Civil War, the Confederate States of America, including Alabama, refused to recognize Lincoln’s presidency.

Thanksgiving was not celebrated nationwide until Reconstruction concluded in the 1870s.

Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @ShipleyAusten