Join Brad Stone, popular presenter for Poolesville Seniors, on Tuesday November 7th at 7:00 p.m. for a fun and educational talk. Hear how the Civil War helped transform an informal harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621 into one of our nation’s most revered holidays. His presentation focuses on how the symbolism of the story of Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving increasingly became a rallying point for pro-Union and Abolition forces leading up to the Civil War. It also highlights the leading people and forces during the Civil War that influenced President Abraham Lincoln to issue a Thanksgiving Proclamation that would forever enshrine the holiday in Americans’ hearts.
The program will also reveal many of the fun and fascinating aspects of the Thanksgiving holiday and will provide audience members the chance to win holiday-themed prizes by correctly answering trivia questions.
Location: Poolesville Presbyterian Church Sanctuary
Brad Stone is a volunteer at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD and aboard the USS Constellation in Baltimore Harbor. Over the past few years, he has developed presentations on an assortment of Civil War-related topics. His talks have been given at a wide variety of venues including the Gettysburg Heritage Center, the Antietam Battlefield National Park and the U.S. Navy Museum at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. Several of his presentations have also been televised nationally on C-SPAN3 American History TV.