Although Providence has blessed our land with an abounding harvest, we must remember that there are among us many who will have but a scanty and insufficient share in this abundance. The civil war has given to our care many maimed and helpless men, many widows and orphans, many destitute refugees… Let us each see to it that on this one day there shall be no family or individual, within the compass of our means to help, who shall not have some portion prepared, and some reason to join in the general Thanksgiving.

Sarah Josepha Hale, in Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1864

"The Widow's Thanksgiving,"
Harper's Magazine, December 5, 1874

After dinner aunt Hetty asked me if I didn’t want to carry some Thanksgiving dinner down to the widow Tracy, whose husband was killed in the war. I told her I did, and she gave me a big basket full of nice things. I went to the little house where the widow lived, and it was all still. Then I knocked at the door, and the widow came. She had been crying; and when I told her what I had come for, she caught me up in her arms and hugged me, and then burst out crying again… All the way back I felt a choking feeling in my throat; but my heart was light, and I was very happy, thinking I had made somebody else so.

From : Letter from Ike Partington, Our Boys & Girls Magazine, January 1872