An Evening With President Lincoln and His Thanksgiving Proclamation

Matt and I (Israel) attended an event at The Mokena Library by Abraham Lincoln impersonator and educator, Kevin Wood. He shared the story of Sarah Hale, who spent 35 years writing letters to Presidents and promoting the idea of a unified day of Thanksgiving across all states.  Hearing Mr. Wood speak was like being in the presence of the 16th President.

Matt and I talk interesting Lincoln facts, including his visit to Mokena…almost, a Mokena resident who sang at President Lincoln’s funeral, and so much more! Enjoy this journey into the past and discover the origins of our favorite traditions.

Being Thanksgiving month, we want to give a special thank you for all our Veterans. We are thankful for a community with a long list of those who do and have served and we are thankful for all of you!

Happy Veterans Day and Happy Thanksgiving!
Israel & Matt

You can find Kevin Wood contact info here: Website, Facebook, YouTube
Clips Used:
Honest Abe Talks Thanksgiving
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XykvLob3pt8

Reading of President Lincolns Thanksgiving Proclamation, read by Timeless Reader on YouTube

Check out the Mokena Library Events HERE

Chapters

• 0:00 Sarah Hale's Role in Creating Thanksgiving
• 14:18 Lincoln's Funeral Train and Singing Mochinian
• 19:07 Presidential Visits and Interesting Tidbits
• 34:01 President Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

Transcript

Israel: 0:00

Welcome to Molkina's Front Porch. A Molkina History Podcast with Mac Dalek and me, israel Smith.

Kevin Wood: 0:08

It is seem to me fit and prop that they, that is, these blessings, should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. Basically, there's a woman named Sarah Jacifah Hale, a very influential woman who spent 35 years trying to get this country to have a national day of Thanksgiving, and I was the president who finally honored her request. So we created it in 1863, had a proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving and we did it again in 64 and I understand every year since then the president of these United States has issued a proclamation. You continue the tradition today.

Israel: 0:46

Thursday, october 26th 2023,. Matt and I went to the Molkina Library for a presentation that was put on by Kevin Wood, who is a Abraham Lincoln I don't know if you can call him an impersonator or an educator. He did a speech on Thanksgiving and talking about President Lincoln's role in making Thanksgiving a permanent holiday. Really interesting presentation, don't you think, matt?

Matt: 1:17

Yeah, I really loved it. Yeah, it was really interesting and there was a lot of stuff in there that I learned that I was completely unaware of.

Israel: 1:23

Yeah, so one of the things is we'll share the president's proclamation at the end of the episode to include that there. But, matt, you want to talk a little bit about kind of what his story was and what you know of President Lincoln's role in Thanksgiving.

Matt: 1:45

Yeah, well, to my understanding, he proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving celebration during the Civil War and, as, as Mr Wood or Mr President told us of, there had been Thanksgiving's celebrated in various states or municipalities over the years, going way back before President Lincoln's administration. But it wasn't until yeah, until Abraham Lincoln was president that he made it a national observance. That was then kept up from year to year, and I thought it was interesting.

Israel: 2:25

He asked everybody, kind of as a trick question, what we thought the holiday that was celebrated by everybody there was, and of course the first guest is Christmas.

Matt: 2:37

Right.

Israel: 2:38

And the second being, especially as in the colonial, you know, the New England area.

Matt: 2:42

Yeah, me too.

Israel: 2:43

Yeah, but surprisingly it was not as that was not. He said there was not something that was celebrated by some of the. What did he say? Was it Delaware or no?

Matt: 2:55

Oh right.

Matt: 2:56

Yeah, one of the states.

Israel: 2:57

That was very more hard line and I recognized as more of a pagan holiday than a Christian holiday. So it was actually Thanksgiving, was a national holiday before Christmas was largely due to Sarah Hale. Yeah, and really interesting story, I mean again that's, I knew of her name, I knew her role, but I did not understand how significant and how pestering she was. Yeah, right, the president's over there, yeah, I thought that was great too.

Matt: 3:30

I really like that part yeah.

Israel: 3:32

Do you remember how I don't know how many presidents he said she had written? It was quite a few before President Lincoln.

Matt: 3:39

I think she yeah, because she had written to. I remember him saying to President Buchanan, who was the president before Lincoln, and I don't think you ever responded to her. Even, and there I had it was at least the last few before.

Israel: 3:52

Lincoln and then, interestingly enough, did not write President Lincoln for the first. I think it was two years of his presidency.

Matt: 4:01

Right, yeah, yeah.

Israel: 4:02

Due to the fact of the Civil War going on and understanding his business with that, but I didn't know it here. 1849, she wrote a letter to President Zachary Taylor. So in 1863, he said she was 75 years old and during the Civil War she wrote to President Lincoln. Then, yeah, absolutely. Another interesting fact, I thought, was he talked about President Lincoln setting another tradition that lives on today of the presidential pardon.

Matt: 4:34

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good one too. The turkey, yeah, still going on today.

Israel: 4:39

Jack the turkey was a gift that was meant to be a Christmas turkey for the Lincoln family. Right, yeah, yeah. And Mr Lincoln's son took to him and made him a pet.

Matt: 4:52

Yeah.

Israel: 4:53

And the president wrote an official proclamation freeing him of his burden to feed the family.

Matt: 4:58

Right, yeah, that holiday.

Israel: 5:00

Yeah, that was. I thought that was a pretty funny story. Anything else that stuck out to you about his presentation? Have you seen him before?

Matt: 5:09

I've not seen him before. I was familiar with another Lincoln presenter from many years ago, so Mr Wood was new to me, but I thought he did a very good job and I'm really hoping that the library or if not the library, somebody in town will have him out again. Yeah, because of all those presentations he mentioned that he can do, that all sounded really interesting. They did.

Israel: 5:34

Yeah.

Matt: 5:36

Especially the Lincoln's humor one or whatever he referred to it as I thought that sounded like a bad one.

Israel: 5:40

Yeah, that was good.

Matt: 5:42

And he shared a joke with us too.

Israel: 5:43

Yeah, yeah, that would be really interesting, because that's kind of a side you don't always think of with somebody like President Lincoln.

Matt: 5:49

Right, exactly, yeah.

Israel: 5:51

And he comes from Adrian Michigan and so he was here on a multi. I think he said he was here a week, a couple weeks touring around the area and traveling around but has been here. He said he came to the Moquina Library previously and hopefully he has a chance to come back.

Matt: 6:11

I would hope so. Yeah, definitely.

Israel: 6:13

We'll share his Facebook page. He has a website. His website is MrLincolncom. He's also on Facebook and YouTube by those same names, but we'll share links to that If you want to have him come out and speak. He's very interesting, very informative. Knows a lot about President Lincoln, about his history, Even kind of speaking to us about local connections a little bit to President Lincoln in our area.

Matt: 6:43

Yeah, yeah, definitely, he was pretty good. I thought in his the way he kind of just nailed Lincoln's image and persona was really good too, like I thought I was seeing the real thing. Yeah, so he's definitely worth seeing if you ever had the chance to. Yeah, definitely yeah.

Israel: 7:04

And I thought it was interesting, he's multilingual.

Matt: 7:07

So not only you get an.

Israel: 7:08

English version of Abraham Lincoln, but you can get the Spanish, french or German, yeah, and you can get the English version of MrLincoln, so pretty cool. And, matt, you're obviously a big Civil War guy, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you ever have a a lot of information history yourself about Lincoln and the war, what any other local connections or things you you have information about to share?

Matt: 7:35

Yeah well, absolutely there are. There are a few local connections out there. The best one is a story that I bet most people wouldn't be familiar with. It was told a lot in yesteryear but I never knew of a living person that was familiar with it. But as the story went, this first part, the sort of prologue to it, is all historically verified. These are actual events that happened. They stand up to historic research. We know it's the real deal.

Matt: 8:13

But of course Abraham Lincoln visited Will County in 1856, when he was out in Joliet stumping for the first Republican candidate for president, which was a Fremont. Was that John Fremont? And as it was not common in those days for the candidate himself to do his own campaigning, people did it on his behalf. So that's what brought Abraham Lincoln to Joliet. Of course he was not yet president in 1856, and he visited the city, made a speech or two, and then it was said that he traveled out east, found his way into New Lenox Township, where it is said that he stayed overnight, a night or two, at what in later years would be known as the Old Brick Tavern, which was a very historic building that stood in New Lenox on what is today Route 30, lincoln Highway very fitting and Joliet Highway and in fact there's even a little historical marker that is made from some of the bricks that came from the building on that site right there at that corner, to this day, just steeped in local history out there.

Israel: 9:29

Nowhere near that old Abe Lincoln Hotel. He didn't stay there, unfortunately not.

Matt: 9:33

No, no, but then the same kind of corridor there. Anyway, it was said that while he was in Joliet he came out and stayed overnight at the Tavern, as travelers would do in those days, and it was said that while he was there he took his horse just a little further east, down the Lincoln Highway, or what would later be known as the Lincoln Highway, to the farm of the Cleveland family, who were some old settlers who lived at the intersection of today's Lincoln Highway and Wolf Road. They lived on the southern side of the road, on the southwest side of the intersection, but they had some of their outbuildings, their farm buildings, on both sides of the road. At least they did up into the 1870s. Probably the same situation back in the 1850s.

Matt: 10:25

But in any case the story goes yeah that that Abraham Lincoln, not yet president, stopped at the Cleveland farm to have his horse shod, which of course nowadays we know that location as Mochina. So there's the story of how Abraham Lincoln was in Mochina. Of course, mochina in 1856 was just a tiny little hamlet on the Rock Island Railroad. No story has ever survived about him ever having come into town. Don't see why he would have.

Israel: 10:57

But now, as we kind of talked a little bit about earlier, with cases like this and in that time the rumor meld just kind of went crazy.

Matt: 11:08

Right, yeah, yeah.

Israel: 11:08

Especially as you get a little, a few years away from the actual the topic or the event that happened?

Matt: 11:14

Oh yeah, Absolutely.

Israel: 11:15

So like there was a rumor of him staying in Moquina and little Al.

Matt: 11:22

Oh yeah, that's what I heard, there's that old story.

Israel: 11:24

Yeah, do you? Think that was any truth to that.

Matt: 11:26

Yeah, I don't put any credence into that story at all, simply because the building that now houses little L's did not stand during Lincoln's lifetime.

Israel: 11:35

Okay, I think we can pretty solidly debunk that one then, right?

Matt: 11:38

Yeah yeah, that building in its iteration is Johann Schieck's Saloon and Inn wasn't built until 1875. Okay, ten years after Lincoln passed.

Israel: 11:50

So in 1856, when Lincoln would have been here, what would he have seen if he had been in the United States? What would he have seen if he had come down the railroad tracks or modern day Front Street?

Matt: 12:01

Yeah Well, he would have seen the Rock Island Depot, which was one of the very first buildings to be built in Moquina. He would have seen let's see 1856. He would have seen the grist mill of Cyrus Cross and Noble Jones, which stood at the location of today's grain elevator, just behind et cetera. There, not the same building, but the grist mill would have been a brand new building at that time, actually only about a year or so old, and he just would have seen a couple pretty simple buildings that were handful of businesses. He would have seen cluster houses. If he ventured up Moquina Street at all, he would have come to the Village Square where he would have seen the Moquina Schoolhouse, our original one room schoolhouse that stood not exactly in the footprint but very close to where St John's Church stands nowadays. Also would have been a brand new building in 1856, only built the year before. Let's see, in terms of recognizable landmarks though today not really much I can think of that would have been there in his time.

Israel: 13:25

Interesting. And then you had another story as well you wanted to share.

Matt: 13:31

Yeah, a couple actually, Of course. As we know, unfortunately and tragically, Mr Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. And, as some of us, or all of us, may know, there was a very elaborate funeral train that carried him from Washington DC back to Springfield.

Israel: 13:49

And I'm sorry, but also it did not come through Moquina to get to Joliet. It came from Chicago to Joliet.

Matt: 13:57

That's right.

Israel: 13:58

But do we know the route that it took if it didn't come through Moquina?

Matt: 14:02

There are. Yes, the route is known, but not by me, unfortunately, At least not in this neck of the woods. It did not come down the Rock Island. It passed through Lockport, believe. It passed through LeMont, which is not Will County. But when it got to Joliet the train did stop, although the president's casket, or what have you coffin, was not taken out of the train. He didn't lay in state in Joliet or anywhere in Will County, but there were some people, because there was quite a crowd that had assembled there to receive the train, of which there were people from Moquina, there Do you know.

Israel: 14:47

So it stopped in Chicago before it made its way to Joliet. Yes, and did they do a similar ceremony in Chicago?

Matt: 14:54

Yes, yes, there was a huge ceremony and funeral that was given in Chicago. He was the president lay in state in. I believe it was City Hall. There are photographs of the building with the morning crepe over it and thousands of people coming in and out. Of course, most of the people are a blur, because you had to remain perfectly still for photography back then.

Israel: 15:22

And did. Were there other cities along the route that did, as big of you know, have them laying in state?

Matt: 15:33

Yeah, yeah.

Matt: 15:34

As well, yeah, pretty much there were. There were huge ceremonies, remembrances, you name it. That happened in just about every city of any size that the train passed through or where he was taken off the train, like Philadelphia, for example, I believe he went through. I think he went through Indianapolis too, which is kind of a roundabout route, but everybody wanted to be along the route. So there are a lot of really good books that have been written just about Lincoln's funeral and all the planning and the pomp and circumstance that went into it.

Israel: 16:12

Do you know how long it was from the time he left DC till he got to Springfield?

Matt: 16:19

Yeah, I believe it was about 20 days or so, wow, so yeah, yeah.

Israel: 16:23

It was a packed, I mean it seems like that would be a pretty busy trip yeah.

Matt: 16:30

Oh, absolutely, it was the biggest thing the country had seen at that time. Yeah, yeah, what an experience.

Israel: 16:35

I mean, let alone see a president come through. You see a hero, a civil war president that won the civil war united the nation and now he's been killed and coming through.

Matt: 16:50

Absolutely yeah.

Israel: 16:51

Yeah, wow, all right, sorry, go ahead. No, yeah, yeah.

Matt: 16:57

So there were. There were people that from Mokena that made the trip to Joliet to see the president's funeral train. Unfortunately we don't know who they were. We only know that there were Mokenians there, based on a retrospective that was published in one of the Joliet papers must have been about 20 or 30 years after in which the author said he kind of listed off names of places in Will County and said that people from these places had come to the funeral and that Mokena was one of them. But there were.

Matt: 17:33

There was another interesting connection to Lincoln's funeral and Mochina in that we had a man who lived here back in the 1870s, into the 1880s a little bit, a German born gentleman by the name of Christian Knopp, who he's born in Germany, in the summer of 1833, came to Chicago in 1854 as a young man, kind of made a living, a name for himself in Chicago. He was very musically inclined, he was an organist and a choir director in Chicago, started a family there. But after the great fire of 1871, he came out to Mochina where he bought a farm here on today's Schoolhouse Road and eventually, after having been here for a while with his family, he and his son-in-law, erwin McGoverni, went to Manhattan together where they were in business and there Mr Knopp passed away in the fall of 1886.

Matt: 18:38

But I give you this background on this man because he has a kind of an interesting little claim to fame in that when once again President Lincoln's funeral train came to Chicago, he sang at the services there. As I mentioned, he was a choir director, so he sang at the President's funeral in Chicago and later would become a Mochinian.

Israel: 19:07

His time, where the Rock Island would have been a more prominent train line. We would have seen him come through here.

Matt: 19:13

Oh, absolutely.

Israel: 19:15

Do we know of any other presidential visits to Mochina oh?

Matt: 19:18

yeah, yeah, that's actually a really good question. So we do know that Herbert Hoover came through town, and during the Depression years when he was president must have been maybe about 1932, 1933 thereabouts he did not stop, though. He and his entourage were traveling down the Rock Island Railroad and they passed through town. We don't even know if he was looking out the window at the time, if he saw anything, but never the less Any idea.

Israel: 19:47

if there was people standing out there, I mean, would they have been wanting to see the train?

Matt: 19:52

Could very well have been. I do know that the incident was reported in our readers. Our listeners will know the news bulletin. The story was reported in the news bulletin so people knew that he came through. I'm not sure I can imagine that. I mean, you know the president was coming through your small rural farm town, railroad town.

Matt: 20:15

I'm sure people turned out to see him, but there's there's another interesting story, though it doesn't totally count as a president coming through, but nevertheless it's kind of a funny story. Way back in the early 1900s, during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, one day somehow a rumor got started that he's headed down the Rock Island. He's going to be passing through town. So it the word spread really quick through town. That day. Everybody got really excited. People were just getting themselves up into a lather decorating the town, people were getting their flags out and hanging up there, bunting across their buildings on Front Street, et cetera, et cetera. And lo and behold, they waited and they waited and they waited and he never showed up. It turned out that somebody had just started a rumor. Oh no, it turned out that it was a kind of a big wig from the Rock Island that was coming down and somebody, as this traveled through the grapevine it transformed into the president is coming.

Israel: 21:25

So that was it. Yeah, that's kind of a funny one, yeah, yeah, all right, any others that you know of, or is that kind of?

Matt: 21:32

There's another kind of an interesting one. He was never president, but William Jennings Bryan, people will or history inclined folk will know him as a presidential candidate. I think that was back in the 1890s. He was running for president, I believe, and somebody out there can correct me if I'm wrong on this. I think he ran against McKinley, I want to say, but in any case his, his train came through Mokena.

Matt: 21:58

It must have been about 1896 or thereabouts, if I'm not mistaken, and his train stopped and, as the story goes, a little girl from town was asked to come on board the train and meet Mr Bryan, just kind of like PR kind of thing. And the story goes that he kind of he, he took her up on his lap and he asked her something like do you know who I am? And she identified him as the guy he was running against whether it was President McKinley or yeah or whoever, but yeah, that's another kind of funny one.

Israel: 22:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting. So a few things, and I probably haven't read the books that you have about.

Matt: 22:47

Mr.

Israel: 22:47

Lincoln, but a couple interesting tidbits. I thought that he lost his mother at nine years old. Yeah, yeah, he was a self taught lawyer. Yes, he was. Very little formal education. I think now they call that the unauthorized practice of law.

Matt: 23:05

Yeah right.

Israel: 23:05

Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty much only one of them live to adulthood. That's robert has truly had Edward and willy all died. I thought this was interesting. As a member of congress, he was very much against the Mexican american war. Yeah, that's true. Yeah Is very against it I'm. I just thought it's kind of ironic, being that he then becomes president and is his whole presidency, and life is now defined by his by the civil war exactly.

Matt: 23:38

Yeah, yeah, he was not. He was not a war mongering man At all. Yeah, the civil war kind of fell into his lap and well, he was, yeah, he was in congress. He was not a fan of the war against Mexico, so Any, I Not.

Israel: 23:54

that's probably a whole nother podcast, but they're like a brief note that you understand of why what is opposition was to that war.

Matt: 24:03

You know that's. That's a good question. I can't remember all the details of hand. I do kind of remember reading something that he he felt it was very unjust like a big, strong country like America going after Mexico, which Lincoln and maybe some others at his time kind of viewed it as being kind of one sided, yeah, something along those lines. But I'm sure there was a lot more to it than that, yeah.

Israel: 24:31

Also, they said that he hated the nickname a. That is true, yeah, all right, I'm glad we're gonna able to confirm some of these, yeah absolutely. They preferred Lincoln, mr Lincoln or president Lincoln yeah, yeah, absolutely. Also, he was the only president to hold the patent oh, that's right, I forgot about that yeah, so his patent was for a booing vessel over Scholes. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

Matt: 25:00

I, if I'm not once again, I say I always preface everything I say with this, if I'm not mistaken which I could very well be, but I believe it had something to do with some sort of contraption that raised and lowered Canal boats, something, something along those lines. It had to do with, I believe, raising and lowering vessels on Canals, I think sure that may.

Israel: 25:28

Okay, booing vessels over Scholes, scholes probably being.

Matt: 25:33

Yeah, that's.

Israel: 25:34

I know I've heard that word I can't draw. We'll look it up. Maybe I'll put a little description on the YouTube video for us.

Matt: 25:40

Yeah, no, definitely that'd be cool.

Israel: 25:42

And although his invention was never actually used on boats or made commercially available, right, his president. Lincoln's last undisputed descendant died in 1985. That is true yeah. Robert Todd Beckwith that's a great grandson of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln's only surviving son, robert.

Matt: 26:05

Yes.

Israel: 26:05

Died on Christmas Eve 1985.

Matt: 26:09

Yeah, he was the last in the in the family line. Yeah, that's, that's a whole other. I like how you put the last undisputed descendant Because there was once again, this is a whole other podcast, but there was a lot of. If I remember correctly, there was some dispute. I think Mr Beckwith might have. There were some children that were alleged to have been his but were never confirmed. So that's why you know there are possibly descendants, but he was the last one where his parentage wasn't in doubt.

Israel: 26:45

Well, and I was interested to hear when I took my son through the Springfield home of Abraham Lincoln this summer, yeah, and I was surprised to hear how long the Lincoln family maintain control of that house like.

Matt: 27:02

Yeah.

Israel: 27:03

I think some of them lived there, maybe at a later time, do you remember how the story goes? But they held, they rented it out, I think at times too, but it was quite, quite a while life.

Matt: 27:16

It was yeah, I remember that as well. Yeah, that it had stayed in the family's possession, or in his son Robert's possession at least.

Israel: 27:23

For a really good tour. I mean I really enjoyed it. It's probably been, you know, 15 years since I've gone through the Lincoln house.

Matt: 27:32

Yeah.

Israel: 27:33

And, you know, always kind of a neat thing to see. I got to see Lincoln's house and Washington's house within about a month.

Matt: 27:40

Oh, nice, ok, so very cool.

Israel: 27:43

And my last little tidbit throughout his life and even at the height of the Civil War in 1864. Lincoln would describe himself as an accidental instrument, temporary and to serve but for a limited time. Or another phrase he used was a piece of floating driftwood. Yeah, and I thought it was interesting because you know, you always hear of, you know presidents or great men and they're kind of drawn to destiny or they're, and clearly Lincoln played a major role in our country.

Israel: 28:17

Yeah, I mean there's few that you can point to that had a greater effect, but he still viewed himself, as you know, just a piece of driftwood.

Matt: 28:28

Yeah, yeah, he did, yeah, absolutely.

Israel: 28:32

So that was kind of interesting, you know, I don't know.

Israel: 28:35

Yeah, very interesting it's the perspective he had to keep of himself, right, I guess maybe that's the way of you know, obviously being a very spiritual man and having a lot of his views, and that tied to scripture, yeah, right, and the idea of humbling I think that's something that we heard Mr Wood say when he was talking about President Lincoln is that it was they encouraged in their proclamations. Humbling, right, yeah, you know, thanksgiving was a time of thankfulness, but as well as humbling yourself. And you see that reflected in, you know, statements like this where he just sees himself as I'm not, I'm not this great, I didn't do all that, I'm just a piece of driftwood.

Matt: 29:19

Yeah right right. So again, yeah, just neat to see. Yeah, it was yeah.

Israel: 29:26

Neat to hear. That is how he saw things in a good perspective to have, so yeah. Anything else, matt, you want to add about President Lincoln or about Mr Wood? Wow, yeah.

Matt: 29:40

Nothing's really coming to mind, just other than, yeah, we do have some connections to President Lincoln here in Moquina and if anybody ever has the opportunity to see Mr Wood as Mr Lincoln, I think, as I said before, absolutely recommend it, because you'll think you're seeing the real deal. Yeah, so it's pretty cool, definitely, yeah.

Israel: 30:01

And we'll share. We'll have the full President Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation at the end here so you can listen to that and again to the library. Please get him back out. Very informative and we'll be sure to spread the word next time too. All right, well, thanks, matt. Great to talk.

Kevin Wood: 30:22

Glad we got to go to this event together. I trust that you have been encouraged to hear the story of how Thanksgiving Day came to be a national holiday. If I and the people of my day were able to acknowledge the ample blessings received from God in the midst of the dark days of the Civil War, when it was not at all clear how the war would eventually turn out, I trust that you too will be able to find things for which you can be thankful, despite your own trials and difficulties, whether as a nation, a community, a family or an individual. I trust also that the Thanksgiving holiday will continue to be a uniting force for the whole nation and the American people, just as it was for us at a time when the Union was threatened with dissolution. And finally, may it be a lesson to all of us of perseverance, following the example of that very persistent widow, sarah Jacifah Hale. Thank you once again, and may you have a truly blessed Thanksgiving holiday, as you remember God's many blessings.

Israel: 31:31

I hope you enjoyed those words. Those are from Kevin Woods YouTube page and, again, we both really enjoyed the presentation. We appreciate that the library is putting on programs like this and you know, I know you can go on and sign up for their newsletter, their emails, so you can find out about other great events like this that are going on. So you can look those, look them up on Facebook or by searching for the Mokena library. For Mr Wood, I wanted to share his website is wwwmisterlinkoncom. He also has a Facebook page that you can find by searching for Mr Lincoln, kevin Wood. He's on Twitter or X at Mr Lincoln, underscore K Wood.

Israel: 32:20

Also, you can find by searching Abraham Lincoln by Kevin Wood on YouTube as well, and has a lot of his information. If you're interested in having him come out and speak, highly recommended, very interesting, and he also I think it looks like he online. He still does virtual calls, so if that was something you're interested in as well, he offers that. So check out all his information. He has some. Some of his YouTube videos are really interesting. Part of what we took here was he has some clips of the different presentations as well, as in the beginning we played a clip from a couple years ago where he was in Naperville. The Naperville community TV channel did a little piece on him, so that's where we got that opening part from. So, again, check all his stuff out, please. We'll post that in the show notes. We'll have the links to his different social media and YouTube page and website, as well as the links to the Naperville video as well.

Israel: 33:22

I want to thank you for listening. We're thankful for our listeners. We're thankful for I'm thankful for Matt and the hard work that he's put in to keep and maintain our village's history. We're thankful for you, thankful that you're listening and hopefully learning something and enjoying it as well. As we finish, I'm going to leave you with the full presidential proclamation from Abraham Lincoln as read by the timeless reader on YouTube. So listen to the words, have a great Thanksgiving and we'll see you next time on Mokena's Front Porch.

Matt: 34:01

The Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart, which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Matt: 35:07

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength, from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship.

Matt: 35:17

The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements and the mines, as well as iron and coal, as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than here to fore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield, and the country rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human council hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. This seem to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are so journeying in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the Ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union, in testimony whereof I have hereon to set my hand and cause the seal of the United States to be affixed Then at the City of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord 1863, and of the independence of the United States, the 88th by the President, abraham Lincoln, william H Seward, secretary of State,