In early New England at Thanksgiving time, it was customary
to place five grains of corn at every plate. This served as a
reminder of those stern days in the first winter when the
Pilgrims' food was so depleted that only five grains of corn
were rationed to each individual at a time.
The Pilgrims wanted their children to remember the sacrifices,
the sufferings, the hardships which made possible the settle-
ment of a free people in a free land. They did not want their
descendants to forget that on the day on which their ration
was reduced to five grains of corn, only seven healthy
colonists remained to nurse the sick, and nearly half their
number already lay in that windswept graveyard on the hill.
