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Although I may have been little enough for the concierge to hand me an evergreen-colored stuffed alligator when my family checked in at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Va., I had no trouble eating a five-course Thanksgiving dinner.
My parents probably woke me from my childlike travel sleep 15 minutes before arriving in front of the three towers, white as alabaster, that dominate the Italianate hotel, but I have no recollection of lifting my eyelids to the cupolas or entering the lobby crowned with a stained glass dome. I do, however, remember my mother explaining the reason I cradled the plush reptile in my mitts: the lobby, previously called the Palm Court, once had deep marble pools where live alligators, donations from Richmond socialites, swam until 1948. No child can resist the temptation of an exotic creature, and I immediately cased the lobby, hoping one still lurked in a corner. No luck. But I named my newest acquisition “Ally” and stared at the life-sized, Carrara marble rendering of the third president himself, carved from Edward Valentine’s hand in 1895.
As my mother brushed my blonde-brown hair until it crackled and shone and stuffed me into a puffy dress, I probably introduced Ally to Panda, another rather creatively named critter in my collection, who accompanied the Brannock Clan on every trip. My mother likely helped me tuck them into bed before ushering me from our room and into Lemaire, one of Richmond’s favorite restaurants, for my first five-course meal.
The presence of a kindergarten-aged child at Lemaire probably elicited eye-rolls from other diners when my parents and I first entered the dining room, but by that age, I had become a pro-diner and could sit through long meals as attentively as a food critic. It was the first time I had ever tasted lox, a petite and beautifully soft-boiled quail egg and flash-fried slivers of sweet potato crispy goodness. A fried oyster probably found its way into the menu, as well.
Those delicacies amount to my earliest recollection of a Thanksgiving, and I can’t imagine a more fitting setting than a hotel named for one of Virginia’s finest sons as my first Thanksgiving in memory. After all, the first Thanksgiving occurred in Virginia at Berkeley Hundred — now called Berkley Plantation — Dec. 4, 1619, a full year and 17 days before the Puritans landed in that cold, dreary, colony farther north.
If this news shatters your conception of American history, blame your kindergarten teacher for perpetuating myths foisted on students since Reconstruction to suppress the South’s role in the forging of America. Thanks to Dr. Lyon Gardiner Tyler — son of President John Tyler, William & Mary alumnus, William & Mary president and the namesake of its history department — and his discovery of the Nibley papers in 1931, we’re slowly telling our story and the truth.
Settlement began in Virginia in 1607. In 1609, drought and the outbreak of the first Anglo-Powhatan War left only 60 of 240 settlers alive in spring of 1610, and history books have since called that period the Starving Time. Afterwards, John Smith of Pocahontas myth and legend swooped in to save the colony, making it the first permanent English settlement. Ten years later, a different man with a homophonous name chronicled Virginia’s first Thanksgiving.
John Smyth of Nibley met with four other men to form the Berkley Company and apply for what became Berkley Hundred in 1618. After receiving their patent but before embarking on their adventure to the New World, they chose John Woodlief, a man who survived the Starving Time but had since returned to England, for their captain. The “Margaret” floated up the James River and dropped anchor at Berkley Hundred after a three-month voyage. Woodlief read orders from the Berkley Company, the first of which stated: “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
No Squanto, no corn, no turkey. Instead, the Virginians focused on prayer; historians speculate they dined on ham and oysters.
Smyth recorded the expedition in detail, but the Berkley venture halted after Chief Opechancanough’s 1622 massacre that began the second Anglo-Powhatan War. Somehow, the New York Public Library acquired the Nibley papers and published them in 1899. The account of America’s real first Thanksgiving gathered dust for 32 years before Tyler’s discovery. Another 32 years passed before Virginia received national recognition for hosting the first Thanksgiving when President John F. Kennedy mentioned Virginia in his 1963 Thanksgiving address.
As you read this, I’m basking in my natural habitat — bourbon in hand, dogs at my feet — in my native state. My father is reading Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, and my mother is arranging an army of miniature gourds on our dining room table. Spending this Thanksgiving at home after these months away from Virginia will be just as memorable as the one my family spent at the Jefferson so many years ago.
And you can bet your oysters we won’t pay homage to Pilgrims by serving a turkey at our dinner table.
Phoebe Marie Brannock has a degree in history from the College of William & Mary.
Contact Phoebe Marie Brannock at 641-792-3121 ext. 6547 or pbrannock@newtondailynews.com