Your TR Source
Robert Lincoln O’Brien believes that Thanksgiving should be moved from the last Thursday in November to the last Saturday in November.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-07-02
President Roosevelt informs his son Kermit how the family spent Thanksgiving Day riding horses with the Lodges, Robert Ferguson, and General Wood, eating and dancing. He also talks about the family pets.
1902-11-28
Endicott Peabody looks forward to seeing Theodore Roosevelt and his family on Thursday. He also wonders if Roosevelt can give a lecture on Friday after Thanksgiving. Peabody adds that he was sorry to hear of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt’s accident.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-07
Endicott Peabody is looking forward to having Theodore Roosevelt for thanksgiving.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-02
Endicott Peabody invites Theodore Roosevelt to stay at Groton School for the Thanksgiving Holiday with his family. Peabody will have Roosevelt speak once formally, but hopes to allow boys to listen to his conversations. Peabody also addresses Roosevelt’s previous letter about Groton School being criticized.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-30
Endicott Peabody invites Roosevelt to visit Groton for Thanksgiving. Peabody and his wife, Fannie, are planning to go to Boston with their children for Thanksgiving evening to spend time with older generations of the family. However, Peabody is confident that Roosevelt and his wife, Edith, will stay for a few days, and there will be time for Roosevelt to speak to the boys at Groton School. Roosevelt is welcome to join the boys on walks or lead class lectures. Peabody informs Roosevelt that Dr. Cowles will check on his son, Quentin, tomorrow. If necessary, Peabody can take Quentin to Boston for further medical treatment. Peabody also notes how much he has enjoyed having Roosevelt’s other son, Archie, at Groton.
Thomas O. Conant sends President Roosevelt a description of a Thanksgiving reception given by the ambassador in Vienna. He describes the more positive public opinion of Americans which is held by foreigners since President Roosevelt took office.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-02
Ambassador Francis tells President Roosevelt he fielded a request from the Neue Freie Presse, for an interview regarding the controversy between the United States and Japan on the tensions in California. Francis encloses what he gave the reporter. He also notes that about 400 guests came to a reception at the American Embassy on Thanksgiving Day, and he sends holiday greetings to the Roosevelts.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12-12
Douglas Robinson writes how pleased he and Corinne Roosevelt Robinson will be to visit with President Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt at Thanksgiving. Robinson asks if he can travel with Roosevelt to see the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-11-11
As a young girl, Eleanor Butler Roosevelt listed things she was thankful for to celebrate Thanksgiving Day in 1896. The list is a typed copy of the original.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1896
President Roosevelt writes his son Kermit about Archie returning home and not looking well. He says they spent Thanksgiving Day with the Rixeys and Cooleys at the du Ponts who own President Madison’s house. Roosevelt talks about horse back riding with Jack Greenway and then gives updates on Ted and Quentin.
1907-11-30
Theodore Roosevelt, wearing his Rough Rider uniform, shares a feast with many wild animals sitting around a large banquet table in the wilderness. A bear is making a toast. Wearing buckskin, “Teddy Jr.” is sitting on a rock at a small table with a bear cub. Caption: The Bear (with deep feeling) Here’s hoping that when next we meet, we see you first.
Puck took another opportunity at a holiday time, Thanksgiving 1905, to run a non-political cartoon. J. S. Pughe’s drawing certainly was not partisan, either, but today might be considered as advocating a social cause: Opposition to animal cruelty. Theodore Roosevelt’s joy of the hunt, and descriptions of shooting and slaughtering (though always for food, hides, or specimens) are off-putting to more readers today than in his time.
A domestic servant carries a large platter with a roast turkey raised above her shoulders to keep it away from a dog anxious for a taste.
The relative newcomer on Puck‘s artistic staff in 1905 was Carl Hassmann, who by this date, Thanksgiving of 1905, had established himself as a cartooning Grim Reaper, usually drawing realistic portrayals of dirty corruption or impending disasters. So this holiday cover — a placement lately reserved for Rose O’Neill, Frank Nankivell, or Louis M. Glackens — proved his versatility. As with many magazines of the day, an Art Nouveau “poster look” addressed readers; a pleasant design (of course non -political at holidays) and featuring the era’s inevitable version of a Gibson Girl.
Theodore Roosevelt inquires what members of the family would like for Christmas presents and also mentions Thanksgiving dinner plans with friends.
A turkey sits on a tree branch, dreaming of a “Vegetarian Pledge” and countless people lining up to sign their names. All the wild and domestic animals laugh. In the lower right corner, an old man with an axe waits for the turkey.
The major cartoon weeklies of the time had virtual designees as specialists in animal cartoons. Anthropomorphic creatures were a staple of American humor at the time — in fact, since Aesop — but cartoonists joined the ranks at this time. J. S. Pughe was the most prominent of Puck’s animal cartoonists.
A young woman with a shotgun over her left shoulder carries a dead turkey.
By 1904, the cartoonist L. M. Glackens (brother of prominent American Impressionist painter Louis Glackens, one of “the Eight”) executed many of the magazine’s holiday and seasonal covers in the era’s best poster-like traditions.
The British Lion, the Russian Bear, a cat labeled Austria, and three dogs labeled “France, Italy, [and] Germany” gather around a table for Thanksgiving dinner. The British Lion is holding a large knife labeled “Dismemberment of Turkey,” but the platter is empty. Looking in from the left is a turkey wearing a fez labeled “Turkey.” Caption: Turkey — Ha! Ha! How disappointed they look! Now I have lots to be thankful for.
In cartoonist Pughe’s drawing the only thing that the symbol of Turkey, the turkey in the doorway, can really be happy about is the frustration on the faces of those neighboring powers who were prepared to gobble it up. The once-mighty Ottoman Empire, reduced to the country of Turkey but slowly chipped away, province by province, people by people, tribe by tribe, for more than a century.
In a kitchen, a young woman prepares a pie while four young children watch. A dead turkey lies on a table and a large pumpkin stands on the floor.
Increasingly during the first decade of the twentieth century, Puck devoted more issues to holidays and seasonal observances, as with this Thanksgiving-themed issue. And increasingly the magazine devoted more attention to decorative covers. Rose O’Neill, Frank Nankivell, and L. M. Glackens were most often assigned these covers and spreads; and memorable reflections of the spirit of the times, like this happy drawing, tenderly colored, resulted.
A large group of wild and domestic animals sit around a table for the “Thanksgiving Banquet of the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ Club.”
American cartooning’s foremost animal cartoonist at this time, and until the mid-1920s, was T. S. Sullivant. He drew for Life and, during the period of this cartoon, for Judge Magazine; seldom for Puck. J. S. Pughe was Puck‘s go-to cartoonist for animal subjects, which was a popular genre at the turn of the century.
William Jennings Bryan and David B. Hill roast a bird over a campfire outside the “Dem. Homestead.” Caption: Dismal Dave and Weary William join in celebrating.
Democratic leaders William Jennings Bryan, in the middle of his career as a perennial presidential candidate,and former governor and senator from New York, David Bennett Hill, the perennial aspirant for the office, experience a lean Thanksgiving. The two were virtually the only Democrats of national stature as the 1904 elections approached, and in cartoonist Keppler’s view have little to be thankful for. Indeed the Democrats in 1904 would nominate a nonentity, Judge Alton Brooks Parker, and lost the election by record margins.