The Surprisingly Radical History of Mother's Day

By the 1860s, the Mothers' Day Work Clubs launched by Ann Reeves Jarvis had become successful, but now she faced another complication. The area near her West Virginia home was a pivotal stop on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad during the Civil War [source: West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Caught in a storm of rising tensions deep in this crossroads of the Civil War, Jarvis took a stand -- by not taking a stand.

She insisted the Mothers' Day clubs become neutral ports in a sea of political differences. Jarvis and other club members fed and clothed Union and Confederate soldiers; treated their wounds and, just as they'd done with the Appalachian's poorest workers, taught life-saving sanitation methods.

It was a passion that grew out of Jarvis' own tragedies. Years earlier, four of her children had died from contagious diseases such as diphtheria, scarlet fever and whooping cough [source: Tyler-McGraw]. Their deaths would be the first blows of many. Four more of her 12 children would be buried before reaching their 18th birthdays.

Even the end of the Civil War in 1865 did not bring peace. Tensions increased as Union and Confederate soldiers returned from war and found themselves occupying the same space in Grafton, still seething with bitter hostility. Jarvis once again took action. She organized a Mothers' Friendship Day at a local courthouse. Although she publicized the event as a way to honor mothers, its real purpose was to bring together a fractured community by gathering battle-worn soldiers and their families -- whatever side they had been on.

Amid rumors the event would erupt in violence, Jarvis' Mothers' Friendship Day opened with a prayer and a band that played "Should Auld Acquaintances Be Forgot." According to an account by Sen. John D. Rockefeller, "By the time they reached the word 'forgot,' neighbors were weeping and shaking hands." Mothers' Friendship Day became an annual pacifist event [source: The Library of Congress].

Ann Reeves Jarvis was one of several postwar influencers who promoted peace. In 1870, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe also took a stand, notably as author of a well-publicized "Mother's Day Proclamation" urging women to promote peace through political means.

Howe, who had written the Civil War anthem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" years earlier, had become a pacifist after living through the Civil War (where 620,000 soldiers died) and reading accounts of the Franco-Prussian War that followed [source: Kohls]. Howe and other women organized events driven by their pacifist leanings, including Mother's Days for Peace, which were held annually in various locations across the U.S. on June 2 [source: Rosen]. These eventually fell out of favor.

By Jarvis' death in 1905, her daughter Anna was ready to take up the cause. She held a church service on the second Sunday in May, 1908 to honor her mother. Mrs. Jarvis had once said that she hoped there would be one day be a memorial day for mothers, adding, "There are many days for men, but none for mothers."

The custom spread, as Anna publicized it through letters to newspapers and politicians. She lobbied enthusiastically to institute a national holiday that would personalize the mothers' movement by encouraging sons and daughters to honor their own mothers. In 1914, then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson officially named the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day [source: Pruitt].

Almost as soon as the proclamation ink dried, merchants began advertising candies, flowers and greeting cards to commemorate the day. This disturbed Anna, who believed it was being corrupted from her intention of an intimate celebration of one's own mother.

In the years that followed, she tried to reverse the commercialization of Mother's Day, spending her sizable inheritance, along with her energy, on boycotts and lawsuits against groups that violated the spirit of the day. In 1923, she crashed a confectioners' convention. In 1925, she protested the American War Mothers convention, which used Mother's Day as a fundraising event by selling carnations. She was arrested for disturbing the peace [source: Handwerk].

Her efforts, though nearly impossible to ignore, went largely unanswered. She died penniless in a sanitarium in 1948, having no children of her own. Mother's Day continued to gain momentum. Today, it's an international holiday celebrated in 152 countries [source: The Library of Congress].