{"id":2312,"date":"2012-11-21T18:08:55","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T18:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=2312"},"modified":"2022-11-03T12:52:48","modified_gmt":"2022-11-03T16:52:48","slug":"on-thanksgiving-day-tom-turkey-is-a-member-of-everyones-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/on-thanksgiving-day-tom-turkey-is-a-member-of-everyones-family.html","title":{"rendered":"On Thanksgiving Day, Tom Turkey Is a Member of Everyone\u2019s Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: In this article, Scott Phillips begins his Thanksgiving celebration early by searching on \u201cTom Turkey\u201d and looking through some of the more than 12,000 historical newspaper articles his search returned. Scott is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Happy Thanksgiving 2012! I will freely and readily admit that Thanksgiving is my all-time favorite holiday. I particularly love that it is noncommercial and focused on family, thanks, and food. What an awesome combination, especially for us genealogy and family history fans.<\/p>\n

I was looking up a family member just the other day when thoughts of my upcoming Thanksgiving Day menu crept into my head. Since we have 20 family members coming from across the U.S. to share the holiday with us, I have been thinking a lot about Thanksgiving lately. Because I cook our turkeys outdoors on our barbeque grills, the name of \u201cTom Turkey\u201d popped into my mind. Struck by this inspiration, I decided to do a search for this temporary family member in GenealogyBank\u2019s online historical newspaper archives<\/a>. Wow: I was treated to over 12,000 hits, and in I dove!<\/p>\n

The first article I opened offered advice that farmers should \u201cKeep One Tom Turkey for Every Six Hens.\u201d Now, even my love of Thanksgiving isn\u2019t going to lead me to open a turkey farm in my backyard, so while I\u2019ll keep that advice in mind, I also decided to keep on reading.<\/p>\n

\"Keep<\/a>
Jackson Citizen Patriot (Jackson, Michigan), 1 February 1922, page 7<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next I came across something quite useful, an article entitled \u201cReturn Engagements for Mr. Tom Turkey.\u201d Naturally it was a delicious-looking set of recipes and ideas for leftover turkey, and I copied them down and am going to try one of them out this year. That is, if there actually are<\/em> any leftovers on Friday after our Thanksgiving feast!<\/p>\n

\"Return<\/a>
Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas), 29 November 1953, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then I discovered a very enjoyable old newspaper article entitled \u201cThanksgiving Advice.\u201d It suggested that I should look for a \u201cyoung Tom Turkey,\u201d that I should skip the \u201c5 cents a pound\u201d premium price for a \u201cLittle Rhody turkey\u201d from Rhode Island, and instead go for birds from Vermont or maybe Michigan. Plus the article told me that I need to look for \u201csmall red pumpkins\u201d for the best pumpkin pie for our Thanksgiving dessert.<\/p>\n

\"Thanksgiving<\/a>
Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), 25 November 1906, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Soon my heart softened as I read a wonderful story entitled \u201cTom Powers and the Turkey<\/a>.\u201d I encourage you to read it\u2014it\u2019s a truly delightful story about the spirit of Thanksgiving. I still smile as I think back on it.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>
Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), 22 November 1891, page 14<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could have gone on and on, but I have some tough decisions to make about whether or not to add the gizzards into the turkey stuffing. Plus I have to decide where best to place the tape recorder so that I can capture our Thanksgiving blessings around the table for future generations.
\nHappy Thanksgiving 2012 to everyone and have a delightful day with Tom Turkey in your family!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Thanksgiving, Scott Phillips searches on \u201cTom Turkey\u201d and examines some of the more than 12,000 historical newspaper articles his search returned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":87637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12703],"tags":[19013,44,2702,2703],"class_list":["post-2312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-food-and-recipes","tag-thanksgiving","tag-tom-turkey","tag-turkeys"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/photo-1121-2019-featured-graphic-thanksgiving-meal.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2312"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87639,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2312\/revisions\/87639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}