ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This week we've been combing through the NPR archives for Thanksgiving stories from years past. And today, we want to bring you one from the very first Thanksgiving on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED 53 years ago. Reporter John Harnack (ph) visited a woman in her 90s in southern Ohio. She shared memories of the holiday that stretched back into the 19th century. Here's that story from November 25, 1971.
JOHN HARNACK: Mrs. Anna Sennett (ph) lives in Logan, Ohio. Life for Mrs. Sennett began on a nearby farm on November 10, 1877, 94 years ago. She reflected on the Thanksgivings of her childhood.
ANNA SENNETT: I don't think we had as much turkey then as they do now. We were farmers, and Father had been a butcher - my father - and we generally had a big ham and chicken and noodles and the rest of the things (ph) that goes with a dinner like that.
HARNACK: Mrs. Sennett is the mother of seven children. She has 26 grandchildren, and she's lost count of the number of great-grandchildren. This Thanksgiving, some 80 members of the Sennett family will be together. And for Mrs. Anna Sennett, this is very important.
SENNETT: I've had it remarked to me, they never saw so many people get together, no quarreling, no gambling or anything like that. It was a perfectly peaceable get-together.
HARNACK: How are you going to spend this Thanksgiving?
SENNETT: Very much like we have spent them before - try to get all the children and grandchildren, and they are four great-great-grandchildren.
HARNACK: During our conversation, Mrs. Sennett shared the memory of hearing her father talk about the Civil War and Thanksgiving then.
SENNETT: He, at one time, took over being cook for his company, and he said they hadn't been having enough food to eat. But the food had been provided by the government, but someone was just lax and didn't prepare it right. So at Thanksgiving time, someone said, could they have doughnuts? And my father says, did you know I've been working for that? No, they didn't. So he said he had saved that grease and so on until they had a donuts for Thanksgiving, and they all thought it was mighty great of him that he had brought their cooking system up to that. And he went clear through the Civil War.
HARNACK: At 94 years old, Mrs. Sennett will again spend this Thanksgiving with her family. She talked about the way she and her husband, Tom (ph), tried to raise their children.
SENNETT: We tried to teach them uprightness and honesty. Whatever you want someone to do to you, do even so unto them. And if you can give them a lift along life's way, just consider that a good step, and go ahead.
HARNACK: From the thoughts of both young and old, we do have much to be grateful for on this Thanksgiving, 1971. For National Public Radio, this is John Harnack in Athens, Ohio.
SHAPIRO: That story first aired on November 25, 1971, the very first Thanksgiving broadcast on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.