You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly – Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is – and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book – which is mostly a true book; with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up, is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece – all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher, he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece, all the year round – more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me ; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways ; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags, and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer, he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. . Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Buirushers ; and I was in a sweat but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time ; so then I didn’t care no more about him ; because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn’t. She said it was a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.

“Once ’pon a time,” said Uncle Remus to the little boy—“But when was once upon a time?” the child interrupted to ask. The old man smiled. “I speck ’twuz one time er two times, er maybe a time an’ a half. You know when Johnny Ashcake ’gun ter bake? Well, ’twuz ’long in dem days. Once ’pon a time,” he resumed, “Mr. Man had a gyarden so fine dat all de neighbors come ter see it. Some ’ud look at it over de fence, some ’ud peep thoo de cracks, an’ some ’ud come an’ look at it by de light er de stars. An’ one un um wuz ol’ Brer Rabbit; starlight, moonlight, cloudlight, de nightlight wuz de light fer him. When de turn er de mornin’ come, he ’uz allers up an’ about, an’ a-feelin’ purty well I thank you, suh!

“Now, den, you done hear what I say. Dar wuz Mr. Man, yander wuz de gyarden, an’ here wuz ol’ Brer Rabbit.” Uncle Remus made a map of this part of the story by marking in the sand with his walking-cane. “Well, dis bein’ de case, what you speck gwineter happen? Nothin’ in de roun’ worl’ but what been happenin’ sence greens an’ sparrer-grass wuz planted in de groun’. Dey look fine an’ dey tas’e fine, an’ long to’rds de shank er de mornin’, Brer Rabbit ’ud creep thoo de crack er de fence an’ nibble at um. He’d take de greens, but leave his tracks, mo’ speshually right atter a rain. Takin’ an’ leavin’—it’s de way er de worl’.

“Well, one mornin’, Mr. Man went out in his truck patch, an’ he fin’ sump’n missin’—a cabbage here, a turnip dar, an’ a mess er beans yander, an’ he ax how come dis? He look ’roun’, he did, an’ he seed Brer Rabbit’s tracks what he couldn’t take wid ’im. Brer Rabbit had lef’ his shoes at home, an’ come bar’footed.

“So Mr. Man, he call his dogs ‘Here, Buck! Here, Brinjer! Here, Blue!’ an’ he sicc’d um on de track, an’ here dey went!

“You’d ’a’ thunk dey wuz runnin’ atter forty-lev’m rhinossyhosses fum de fuss dey made. Brer Rabbit he hear um comin’ an’ he put out fer home, kinder doublin’ ’roun’ des like he do deze days.

“When he got ter de p’int whar he kin set down fer ter rest his face an’ han’s, he tuck a poplar leaf an’ ’gun ter fan hisse’f. Den Brer Fox come a-trottin’ up. He say, ‘Brer Rabbit, what’s all dis fuss I hear in de woods? What de name er goodness do it mean?’ Brer Rabbit kinder scratch his head an’ ’low, ‘Why, deyer tryin’ fer drive me ter de big bobbycue on de creek. Dey all ax me, an’ when I ’fuse dey say deyer gwine ter make me go any how. Dey aint no fun in bein’ ez populous ez what I is, Brer Fox. Ef you wanter go, des git in ahead er de houn’s an’ go lickity-split down de big road!’

“Brer Fox roll his little eyes, an’ lick his chops whar he dribble at de mouf, an put out ter de bobbycue, an’ he aint mo’ dan made his disappearance, ’fo’ here come Brer Wolf, an’ when he got de news, off he put.

“An’ he aint mo’n got out’n sight, ’fo’ here come ol’ Brer B’ar, an’ when he hear talk er de bakin’ meat an’ de big pan er gravy, he sot up on his behime legs an’ snored. Den off he put, an’ he aint got out’n hearin’, ’fo’ Brer Coon come rackin’ up, an’ when he got de news, he put out.

“So dar dey wuz an’ what you gwine do ’bout it? It seem like dey all got in front er de dogs, er de dogs got behime um, an’ Brer Rabbit sot by de creek-side laughin’ an’ hittin’ at de snake doctors. An’ dem po’ creeturs had ter go clean past de bobbycue—ef dey wuz any bobbycue, which I don’t skacely speck dey wuz. Dat what make me say what I does—when you git a invite ter a bobbycue, you better fin’ out when an’ whar it’s at, an’ who runnin’ it.”

“ONE January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.

On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was much too big for him and made him look like a little old man. His shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times and left a long stretch of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears; his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask for help, so he sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole beside him, whimpering, “My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!” At the top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had been left at the store while his sister went to the doctor’s office, and in her absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature had never been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her master was sunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and this village was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last he seemed to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up and ran toward her in his heavy shoes…”

A year before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, thirty-eight colonists sailed from England aboard the ship Margaret. They were refugees from the poverty brought on by overpopulation and the decline of the woolen trade in the region of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. Some had tried to grow tobacco in England, but the Virginia Company, which was hoping to develop tobacco plantations in the New World, successfully lobbied the king to ban tobacco agriculture in England for five years.

So the Berkeley group set out on a perilous two and a half month sea voyage for a new life in the wilderness. On the day they landed they gathered around their Captain Woodlief as he proclaimed “We ordaine that this day of our ship’s arrival, at the place assigned for plantation, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

Then the landing party–including a sawyer, a cooper, a shoemaker, a gunmaker, and a cook–set about constructing a storehouse and an assembly hall for the plantation along the James River that became known as the Berkeley Hundred.

The settlement struggled for the first years through the usual squabbling, harsh weather, crop failure, starvation, illness, and attacks from the indigenous population. It was abandoned briefly, but settled again.

The land was eventually purchased in 1691 by Benjamin Harrison III, attorney general of the colony, treasurer and speaker of the House of Burgesses. He died at age thirty-seven in 1710, leaving the property to his only son.

Benjamin IV, built the manor house Berkeley Plantation on the property.

Benjamin Harrison V, who was born at Berkeley Plantation on December 13, 1730, signed the Declaration of Independence and served three terms as governor of Virginia.

His son, William Henry Harrison, also born at the plantation, was elected the ninth President of the United States. Just a month after his inauguration, however, Harrison died in office and was succeeded by his Charles City County neighbor, John Tyler.

In 1888, William Henry Harrison’s grandson, Benjamin, entered the White House as the twenty-third president.

In 1963 President Kennedy recognized Berkeley Plantation as the site of the first official Thanksgiving