The Mother of Mother's Day: Anna Reeves Jarvis

In 1905 Ann Reeves Jarvis died with 13 children born to only see four reach adulthood. In her lifetime she created groups of mothers in communities around W.VA to sanitize the communities in hope to decrease infant mortality. Her efforts inspired Julia Ward Howe, the first advocate for a Mother's Day, to begin a global crusade for world peace in the midst of the Civil war and the Franco Prussian War in 1870. She felt that mother's have a right to protect the lives of their boys entering these wars. She promulgated the idea of  a "Mother's Day for Peace" in several speeches to "appeal to womanhood". Unfortunately her success chart is synonymous to a bell curve; the more she attempted to pervade the idea in innovative ways, the more her momentum increasingly disintegrated.


Fortunately one of Ann Reeves Jarvis's surviving kids, Anna Jarvis, held a memorial service for her two years after her death in a small church in Grafton, W.VA. This gave momentum back to the Mother's Day mission. It became and annual commemorative services for all mothers in Grafton and Philly. White Carnations were distributed heavily, consequently making these flowers the emblem for the mission. in 1910 the governor of W.VA made it an official holiday in May. Four years later President Emeritus Woodrow Wilson made it an international holiday.


During all the progression of the mission,  Jarvis was delighted that everyone complied with her wish to properly place the apostrophe in front of the "s" to show personal possession. She passionately fought for Mother's Day to be private and personal--to create an environment that would accentuate the genuineness of expressed appreciation for all mothers. In fact, when others attempted to promote Mother's Day away from its quintessence, she quickly expressed her aversions. Jarvis endorsed boycotts against businesses who raised the prices of white carnations on Mother's Day. She crashed a Philly Convention because they were improperly using  her idea and completely stole the emblem of the holiday for their personal advantages. She was arrested for this but the charges were dropped so she could continue to pervade her mission. She even challenged Former First Lady Roosevelt. At age 80 Jarvis was in an asylum  and by age 84 she died with no kids.

Anna Jarvis, Julia Ward Howe, and Anna Reeves Jarvis all wanted Mother's Day to be private and genuine. They believed that a private approach to showing appreciation will touch the hearts of mothers more than public displays of appreciation. They knew that mothers did a lot for their households and wished for reciprocity of their actions to be shown through gratuity. Their drive was remarkable. It gave us all the opportunity to further express how much we care for our mothers apart from our everyday living.