Ray,

As noted above, Kyna Hamill refuted the Atlanta Thanksgiving claim by discovering a playbill listing its performance by Johnny Pell, a member of the blackface minstrel group, Ordway's Aeolians, on September 15, 1857, at Ordway's Theater in Boston. Her original intention in researching the song was to settle the dispute between Atlanta and Medford, Mass., about the site of its composition.