What date did George Washington designate for the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation?

George Washington designated November 26, 1789, for the first presidential Thanksgiving proclamation.

Washington issued the proclamation on October 3, 1789, in New York City, at the request of Congress. It called on people in the United States to observe a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. The date selected was a Thursday, continuing a pattern often used for public thanksgiving observances.

The event was not the first Thanksgiving observance connected with the future United States. The Continental Congress had issued an earlier national proclamation in 1777, during the Revolutionary War. Washington’s action was the first such proclamation by a president under the Constitution.

The 1789 observance took place while the federal government was still establishing its practices. Washington attended services at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York and donated food and beer to imprisoned debtors. Thanksgiving did not become an annual federal holiday immediately; Congress established the modern federal holiday much later, in 1941, after decades of state and presidential observances.