<P> The National Thanksgiving Proclamation was the first formal proclamation of Thanksgiving in the United States . President George Washington declared Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer . </P> <P> Setting aside time to give thanks for one's blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement of North America . The first documented thanksgiving services in territory currently belonging to the United States were conducted by Spaniards and the French in the 16th century . Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607, with the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia holding a thanksgiving in 1610 . In 1619, the Berkeley Hundred colony held a service on December 4, 1619, to celebrate "the day of our ship's arrival" and proclaimed the date would be "yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to the Almighty God ." The colony was wiped out shortly after, in March 1722, with some inhabitants being massacred, and the rest fleeing . The generally referenced' First Thanksgiving' occurred on Plymouth Colony, shortly after the colonists first successful harvest in autumn of 1621 . They celebrated for three straight days with their Native American neighbors with whom they had signed a mutual protection treaty the Spring before. (1) </P>

Who was the first us president to declare a national day of thanksgiving