Suffer the Turkeys

As Thanksgiving Night passes into Black Friday, I pause and reflect upon the proto-holiday as celebrated at the Plymouth Colony in 1621, and it's intitutionalization by Lincoln smack in the middle of this nations bloodiest chapter, the Civil War. I think of President Obama's pardoning of the two turkeys (one is a 'second', should the first one die of natural causes before somebody had the opportunity to chop its head off), which naturally leads to Ben Franklin's musings on the turkey being a more appropriate symbol for the newly minted nation than the bald Eagle (and here I second him). Finally, I think of Thomas Granger.

Poor Tom Granger was born into the Plymouth Colony some four or five years after that proto-Thanksgiving. Sixteen or seventeen years after that he would become the first person hanged in the Plymouth Colony, on or about September 8th, 1642.


He [Thomas Granger] was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them.

from Bradford's Of Plymouth Colony

In an act of speculative anthropology on the origins of turkey pardons in the Americas, I must note the date September 8th, and the fact that while all the cattle were paraded before the condemned teenager, no mention of fowl is made. That turkey got eaten. Count on it.

As for myself, I'll take a Honeybaked ham anytime.