1+ day, 13+ hour ago (947+ words) by editor | Dec 1, 2025 | Archive, Homepage, Southern Partisan BEAUFORT " The story of the first Thanksgiving in North America nearly perfectly embodies the truism that history is written by the victors. Representations of the "first" Thanksgiving are rife with English pilgrims and Native Americans celebrating a bountiful harvest in Plymouth, Mass., in the fall of 1621. That's all true enough. But according to historical records, the French may have celebrated a Thanksgiving some 57 years earlier and 1,000 miles south of New England. And while that took place in somewhere along the St. John's River near present-day Jacksonville, Fla., there is a direct line between events on Beaufort County's Parris Island and that celebration. Two decades earlier, France, intent on getting a foothold in the New World, dispatched naval officer Jean Ribaut with orders to establish a colony along the coast. Ribaut sailed from France…...