New York’s Thanksgiving Maskers

The story as it is told

Picture New York on Thanksgiving morning, some time after 1870. The turkeys are in the ovens, and out on the pavements the children have gone begging. They wear oversized old clothes borrowed from the grown-ups, and they have painted their faces or put on masks. Ragamuffins, the city calls them. They go from door to door, hold out their hands, and say the words every household knows: "Anything for Thanksgiving?"

That, says the story, was the first trick-or-treating. Years pass. In the 1930s the city moves against the custom, and the children who once begged in November turn up in October instead, in costume, at the same doors, with the same hands out. The online version gives the custom in between a name: the "missing link."

What we can confirm

Parts of that story hold up. The costumed begging happened, it was common in New York, and the city did try to end it. The record does not show that trick-or-treating began in New York or moved over from Thanksgiving. The phrase "missing link" belongs to the folklorist Tad Tuleja, not "Elizabeth Tuleja" as some retellings have it, and he offered it as a theory.

On Monday, November 22, 1909, the New-York Daily Tribune reported a children's sermon given the day before in Brooklyn by the Rev. Dr. James M. Farrar of the First Reformed Church. His subject was "Thanksgiving Ragamuffins." Farrar dated the custom to "about the year 1870." He said adult societies had paraded in costume on Thanksgiving, and children "began to imitate the grown-ups" by dressing in oversized old clothes and "painting their faces or putting on masks." Farrar did not want the custom stopped. He asked the children to give their pennies to the church's Thanksgiving offering for the poor.

The Library of Congress holds Bain News Service glass negatives of these maskers. The LoC lot record describes them as "New York City, Thanksgiving holiday scenes, 1911," with "Children's games: painting and wearing masks; scrambling for pennies." In the frames, children wear bowler hats, drawn-on mustaches, wigs, white masks and clown paint. Many frames also show children in blackface or in minstrel-caricature masks. Samira Kawash, the main scholarly source, writes that kids "corked their faces or donned masks."

By 1930, New York City's schools superintendent, William J. O'Shea, wanted the custom ended. The New York Times headline of November 22, 1930 reads "O'Shea Acts to End Parades Of Thanksgiving Ragamuffins." The New York Public Library's 2010 blog post quotes O'Shea's circular to schools: "modernity is incompatible with the custom of children to masquerade and annoy adults on Thanksgiving day." On November 28, 1930, the day after Thanksgiving, the Times reported that few children had gone out: "Parading Thanksgiving Ragamuffins Scarce, Except Out Where City's Subway Lines End."

Charities then offered children a supervised costume parade in place of door-to-door begging. Starting in 1937, the Madison Square Boys Club, a youth charity, ran a Thanksgiving costume parade. In 1938 the Times described it as "Taking the Place of Ancient Custom of Young 'Ragamuffins.'" The 1940 parade ran under the Times headline "400 BOYS PARADE AS RAGAMUFFINS." The NYPL blog says that parade carried the slogan "American boys do not beg." The custom did not vanish at once. The Times still reported "Ragamuffins Parade" in its Thanksgiving coverage on November 23, 1956, which the NYPL blog calls the last mention it found.

The facts

• Tribune. New-York Daily Tribune, Monday, November 22, 1909, page 7, column 5, headed "RAGAMUFFIN DAY / Dr. Farrar's Thanksgiving Sermon to Children." I confirmed the date and page from the running head on the scan ("NEW-YORK DAILY TRIBUNE, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1909," page "7"). I confirmed the column by counting the page's seven columns: column 5 carries the article. The NYPL blog's "November 21" is the day of the sermon ("yesterday morning"). loc.gov
• "1870" settled. The raw OCR reads "About the year 1500." I viewed the scan at 2x and it reads "About the year 1870." The OCR is wrong. The reading also fits Farrar's "forty years old" and NYPL's "about 1870." Crops are listed under Images and scans.
• NYPL blog confirmed. Author, date and quotes are given in full under Exact quotes, section 4.
• Nov 22, 1930: "O'Shea Acts to End Parades Of Thanksgiving Ragamuffins" nytimes.com
• Nov 24, 1930: "PLEADS FOR REVIVAL OF PURITAN SPIRIT... Begging by Children Opposed." nytimes.com
• Nov 27, 1930: "Clergymen and Educators Ask Ragamuffins to Stay at Home" nytimes.com
• Nov 28, 1930: "Parading Thanksgiving Ragamuffins Scarce, Except Out Where City's Subway Lines End" nytimes.com
• Nov 26, 1937: "500 CHILDREN HOLD PARADE IN COSTUME; Prize for Best Outfit in Boys Club March Goes to Haile Selassie Impersonator" nytimes.com
• Nov 25, 1938: "HOLIDAY BEGGING VANISHING IN CITY; Boys' Club Parade Taking the Place of Ancient Custom of Young 'Ragamuffins'..." nytimes.com
• Nov 24, 1939: "Angel of Peace, Aged 12, Wins First Prize For the Best Costume in Boys Club Parade" nytimes.com
• Nov 22, 1940: "400 BOYS PARADE AS RAGAMUFFINS; Indian on a White Charger Leads Annual Parade of Madison Square Club" nytimes.com
• NYPL's 1936, 1943 and 1956 claims, checked against the NYT archive index:
• 1956 last mention: confirmed. Nov 23, 1956: "U.S. Pauses to Give Thanks for Peace; THANKS FOR PEACE GIVEN BY NATION City Windy and Chilly Ragamuffins Parade U.S.O. Open House" nytimes.com Also Nov 22, 1956: "CHILLY DAY DUE FOR THANKSGIVING... TWO PARADES SLATED" nytimes.com
• 1936 "Ragamuffins Frowned Upon": not confirmed. No headline with those words appears in the NYT index for Nov 22-28, 1936. It may be a subhead inside the Nov 26, 1936 holiday roundup, "WHOLE CITY READY FOR GAY HOLIDAY; Institutions as Well as Homes and Restaurants Arrange Thanksgiving Feasts. THRONGS WILL SEE PARADE..." nytimes.com That placement is my inference and is unconfirmed. [ secondhand via NYPL]
• Chronicling America does not hold the New York Times. A Chronicling America search for "ragamuffins thanksgiving" in New York papers, 1936-1956, returned no usable hits. No other free archive was checked.

Related: What enters the public domain in 2027

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