Mother's Day...did you know

Courtesy of cnn.com

1858

Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis organizes Mother's Day Work Clubs to help improve sanitation and worker safety in her Appalachian home in West Virginia. The clubs help raise money for medicine, inspect bottled milk and food, and hire women to help families where the mother was ill with tuberculosis. During the Civil War, the clubs remain neutral at Jarvis' urging and provide food, clothing and medical care for both Union and Confederate soldiers.

Sources: CNN, West Virginia State Archives

1864

Anna Jarvis is born on May 1 in a village near Grafton, West Virgina, to Granville and Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis. Her efforts to establish a day to honor mothers would lead to the creation of the modern-day Mother's Day.

1865

With the end of the Civil War, Union and Confederate soldiers return to West Virginia. With tension increasing, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis organizes a Mothers' Friendship Day at the courthouse in Pruntytown, West Virginia, in hopes of bringing together former adversaries. Despite fears of violence, the event is successful and the event was held annually for several years.

1872

Julia Ward Howe, who was a pacifist, suffragette and writer of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," first suggests a holiday for mothers in the United States. She suggested it as a day mothers could rally for peace, and for several years she held an annual Mother's Day meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.


1907

Anna Jarvis conceives the modern-day Mother's Day holiday in honor of her late mother, a community health advocate. Jarvis' mother died on May 9, 1905, so Jarvis chose the second Sunday in May in her memory. The carnation was her mother's favorite flower and the tradition of wearing a carnation survives to this day, red or pink for living mothers and white to honor deceased mothers.

1908

Jarvis launches her campaign for a nationwide observance of Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May, the anniversary of her mother's death. The first bill to call for creating a holiday to honor mothers also was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Nebraska Sen. Elmer Burkett, but the bill died in committee.

1910

West Virginia becomes the first state to officially recognize the holiday when Gov. William E. Glasscock issues the first Mother's Day proclamation on April 26.

1912

Anna Jarvis is recognized as the founder of Mother's Day at the General Methodist Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

1914

On May 9, President Woodrow Wilson signs a joint resolution passed by Congress recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday.

1939

The pansy card is introduced as a Mother's Day card. By 1999, the pansy greeting card has sold more than 30 million copies since its introduction to honor mothers.

1948

Jarvis was deeply dismayed over the commercialization of Mother's Day and before she died in 1948, she admitted that she regretted ever starting the holiday. She once filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival and was arrested for disturbing the peace at another Mother's Day function.

2006

Mother's Day is the third-largest card-sending holiday in the United States behind Christmas and Valentine's Day, according to Hallmark Cards. Hallmark estimates that Americans will send more than 150 million Mother's Day cards and that about 70 percent of U.S. households celebrate Mother's Day.