At Thanksgiving, Americans reflect on their blessings and hope for uplifting family gatherings, with the Pilgrims used as examples of peace, harmony, and thankfulness. However, while their 1623 “way of thanksgiving” represents what we wish for Thanksgiving, Plymouth Colony had previously been closer to families’ worst fears—with resentments surfacing, harsh words spoken, and people becoming upset and angry.

The Pilgrims’ unhappiness arose from their system of common property (not adopted, as often asserted, from their religious convictions, but required against their will by the colony’s sponsors). The fruits of each person’s efforts went to the community, and each received a share from the common wealth. This caused severe strains, as Governor William Bradford recorded:

“[T]he young men…did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong…had not more in division…than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes, etc…thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And the men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”

Bradford summarized the effects of their common property system:

“[T]his community of property was found to breed much confusion and discontentment and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort…all being to have alike, and all to do alike…if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them.”

How did the Pilgrims move from this dysfunctional system to a Thanksgiving we wish to emulate in family gatherings? In the spring of 1623, they decided to let people produce for their own benefit:

“All their victuals were spent…So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length…the Governor gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves…And so assigned to every family a parcel of land…”

The results were dramatic:

“This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

The institution of private property created a dramatic turnaround from the previous contentious situation, where severe whippings had even been employed as an inducement to increased efforts, with little success beyond generating discontent and resentment.

Despite the Pilgrims’ increased efforts, a summer drought threatened their crops. Following their beliefs, they offered contrition for their sins. Then the drought broke, which led to the Thanksgiving we try to emulate. And as historian Russell Kirk reported, “never again were the Pilgrims short of food.”

It is appropriate to remember the Pilgrims as Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. We have incomparably more than they did, but we can learn much from their “way of thanksgiving.”  However, we should also remember that our material blessings are the fruits of America’s system of private property rights, whose unmatched power for peaceful and productive cooperation the Pilgrims demonstrated almost four centuries ago, because those rights, the freedoms they entail and the prosperity they make possible, are under severe assault today.