Leslie Landrigan
speaker
43 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Leslie Landrigan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
So some of the pilgrims who were of the gentry would have been familiar with the sweet potato. But the sweet potato didn't come to America, I think, until 1764. The Irish potato didn't come to the United States until 1718, when there were five shiploads of
Scots-Irish who came to Boston, and the Boston Puritans didn't want to have anything to do with them, so they sent them to the New Hampshire frontier. And in what is now Derry, New Hampshire, they planted the first potato, the first Irish potato. And it was viewed as a food for the poor and For pigs and for the Irish, you just didn't eat the potato.
And the French hated the white potato even more. They banned its harvesting or they banned the planting of the potato because they thought that it caused leprosy. But then during the Seven Years' War, around 1755 or so, there was a French pharmacist who was captured by the Germans. And while he was in prison, they made him eat potatoes.
So after he got released, he got really interested in nutrition and he rehabilitated the potato and The French came to embrace the noble spud, and they served Thomas Jefferson French fries in Paris when he was minister to France. And Thomas Jefferson liked the French fries, so he served them at the White House when he was president.
And that's how the white potato became a popular menu item at Thanksgiving.
They would have known about the sweet potato, but they wouldn't have had them here. It was something, you know, it was like a really fancy food.
Oh, they would have had cranberries, definitely. The natives revered the cranberry. In fact, there is a... There are some Wampanoag people who live on Martha's Vineyard. And their Thanksgiving is the second Thursday, I think, in October. And it's Cranberry Day. And the kids get out of school and they eat cranberries. It was very, very useful. It was used as a dye. It was used as a sweetener.
It had medicinal properties.
They would have eaten the three sisters, the pumpkins, the beans, and the squash. Celery is kind of an interesting vegetable because it didn't really come to America until... the American Revolution, the 1770s, and it was It was kind of a fancy food. But think about it. You're celebrating Thanksgiving in late fall and vegetables are mushy, but there's this nice green crisp vegetable.
And for many years, it was the most popular item on U.S. restaurant menus next to coffee and tea.
Well, the people who stick in my mind are the first four women who cooked Thanksgiving. Because after that first winter, there were only four adult women left in Plymouth Colony. And there would have been some 48 others who survived. And 90 Native Americans. So that's cooking for 140 people. Here are these four women who have to pluck all the birds that the men caught.
They probably have to cut up the deer. They have no running water. They've got to cook outside. It just would have been a nightmare. I can't even imagine it. But I can tell you who they were. There was Mary Brewster, who was older. She was in her 50s, and she was the wife of... William Brewster, the spiritual guide.
There was Susanna Winslow, who was the wife of Edward Winslow, who was one of the leaders. And those two were saints, which means they were the Puritans who came for religious reasons. So the other two women were Elizabeth Hopkins and Elizabeth Billington. And the Billingtons were bad news. Her husband, John Billington, was hanged for murder.
Her son was a troublemaker who got lost and nearly started a war between the pilgrims and the natives, and she was whipped for slander. But the one who really interests me is Elizabeth Hopkins. Her husband was Stephen Hopkins, who was in a Shakespeare play.
He had come over to North America one time previously as an indentured servant, and his ship got wrecked, and they lived on Bermuda for nine months, and rebuilt the ship and went to Jamestown. And Shakespeare heard the story and wrote The Tempest. And so Stephen Hopkins, who came back to North America after returning to England, he was Stefano in The Tempest. He was the power-mad butler.
I think there would have been. One thing I'm really unclear about is whether the Native women came because, you know, they might have brought some nasamp or some cornbread or something. There were servants and there were children, and so I think everybody would have been pressed into service. They'd been working together for over a year.
You know, the pilgrims had things that the Indians wanted, guns, for example, or, you know, trade goods, pots. And the natives had something that the pilgrims wanted, which was fur. There was a huge, huge market for beaver fur in Europe. And the natives taught the pilgrims how to fish. So I think it would have been a cooperative effort.
No, they intermingled a lot. As a matter of fact, Edward Winslow, who was the husband of Susanna Winslow, who cooked that dinner, he saved the chief's life at one point. Massasoit had some illness and Edward Winslow came and Honestly, I think he fed him something like chicken soup and did something to save his life. So, yes.
And, of course, Squanto, the native who breeded them, taught them how to grow corn. So they mingled a lot.
It wasn't really Thanksgiving until the 19th century. it was kind of forgotten. And Thanksgiving was something that the English celebrated in England and here. It wasn't a harvest meal. A real Thanksgiving was getting the community together because you were thankful for something. They could be rain after a drought or a military victory.
Showing 21–40 of 43 · page 2 of 3
← Previous
Next →