A couple weekends ago in Philadelphia I spotted the following historic marker before City Hall, across from the old Wanamaker's building:
(photo credit: KYW Newsradio 1060 Philadelphia)
MOTHER'S DAY Founded by Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia. First officially observed in 1908, it honored motherhood & family life at a time of rising feminist activism. An early supporter was John Wanamaker, whose store stood opposite. Mothers' Day was given federal recognition, 1914.
There is also a marker in Albion, Michigan attributing the founding of Mother's Day, at least in Albion, to Charles and Moses Blakeley and the Albion Methodist Episcopal Church, in the 1880s.
According to the West Virginia State Archives, Anna Jarvis' mother, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, daughter of a Methodist minister and wife of the son of a Baptist minister, set up work clubs to improve health and sanitary conditions in communities of West Virginia near her home in the mid-to-late 1800s. During the Civil War, these clubs provided aid to soldiers on both sides.
After her husband's death, Jarvis moved to Philadelphia to be with her children. She died in 1905. Her daughter Anna was responsible for the institution of Mothers' Day, officially recognized at Andrews Methodist Church, where her mother served in Grafton, VA, and at Wanamaker's Department Store, on May 19, 1908.
Only four of Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis' twelve children lived to adulthood.
