Welcome to the American Story.

Stories about all the things that make America the country we know and love.

The country we give thanks for every day,

and especially on the fourth Thursday of every November.

This year on this occasion I hope you will join me and praying for our country and its great

cause of liberty.

This is Chris Flanray with the Claremont Institute,

wishing you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving. I call this one Sarah Josepha Hale.

I had never heard of Sarah Josepha Hale

until my much better half recently called to my attention a new book about her by Melanie Kirkpatrick. There I learned that she was an American

born in Newport, New Hampshire in 1788. Just a few months after New Hampshire became the

ninth state to ratify the US Constitution, making it the

supreme law of the land among those nine states.

In an era when the average American life expectancy was 40 years. She lived until

1879, 91 years. It has been remembered by posterity primarily for two things.

The poem, popularly known as Mary Had a Little Lamb, and the American tradition

of Thanksgiving.

Like generations of American four and five-year-olds before me, I learned early in life that Mary had a

little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb

was sure to go. But I never knew or was curious to learn who had written the poem.

As a child, these nursery rhymes seem to come to one

as part of the natural order of things.

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