To the Editor:

Thank you for your wonderful local news/events coverage. As a native of Southampton County, I enjoy reading and seeing photos of the area where I was raised. Since relocating to Tennessee in 1992, The Tidewater News has allowed me to stay connected to my hometown.

I teach at an intermediate school in Tennessee. The kids’ page offers lots of opportunities to enrich my curriculum through games and visuals. The “A to Z Kids News” before Thanksgiving talked only about the Pilgrims as having the first Thanksgiving. The First Colony, Virginia, was actually the site of the first Thanksgiving in the New World.

Two years prior to the Pilgrims’ celebration a prayer feast was held at Berkeley Plantation. It was held Dec. 4, 1619.

Information is readily available not only online, but through the Virginia Historical Society. This group has provided me with these facts many years ago. John F. Kennedy officially declared that this first Thanksgiving had indeed taken place two years earlier than the Pilgrims’ feast at Plymouth.

Denise Barrett Murray

Tennessee