May 1: Birthday of Anna Jarvis (1864)
Prayer Idea
Pray for mothers and for their children to show them proper honor.
History Note
Anna Jarvis was born on May 1, 1864, in Webster, West Virginia. Her parents were Granville and Ann Jarvis. Anna was the 10th of 13 children in her family. Only four of them survived to adulthood.
Ann Jarvis was a Sunday school teacher who put her faith into practice in her community. She organized Mothers’ Day Work Clubs to promote the health and well-being of children and families. During the Civil War, Mrs. Jarvis encouraged women to work together to serve the wounded, regardless of which side they fought on. After the war, she encouraged neighbors who had been enemies during the war to restore friendship and good will.
Ann’s daughter, Anna Jarvis, attended Augusta Female Seminary (now Mary Baldwin University) and started working in Philadelphia as an advertising editor for a life insurance company. Anna’s father died in 1902, and her mother died in 1905.
In May of 1907, Anna Jarvis hosted a gathering of friends in her home to celebrate her mother’s life—a life of service to her community and her nation. At this gathering, Miss Jarvis told her friends of an idea she had of a national celebration to honor mothers. The next year, Miss Jarvis suggested that the church where her mother had taught Sunday School for twenty years have a special time of celebration in honor of mothers. She chose to use the white carnation as a symbol for the observance.
Miss Jarvis continued to promote her idea of Mother’s Day and the idea eventually caught on. The Governor of West Virginia issued the first Mother’s Day proclamation in 1910. The United States Congress passed a resolution to establish Mother’s Day as an official holiday in 1914. The resolution was approved by President Woodrow Wilson, and Mother’s Day has been celebrated on the second Sunday in May ever since. The idea also spread to other countries.
Miss Jarvis was displeased with the commercialism that exploded after Mother’s Day became an official holiday. She preferred that mothers be honored in a quieter and simpler way. She wanted Mother’s Day to be a time when people went to visit their mothers and didn’t just send a card or buy them a box of candy. She thought of buying a printed card as “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” She wanted people to go out of their way to honor, as she phrased it, “the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.” Miss Jarvis was once arrested for disturbing the peace while she protested against the commercialization of Mother’s Day.
Anna Jarvis never had children of her own, but she still received thousands of Mother’s Day cards and letters from people all over the world. One of her favorites was a letter from a little boy that read, “I am six years old and I love my mother very much. I am sending you this because you started Mother’s Day.” Sewn onto the letter was a one dollar bill.
The church building in Grafton, West Virginia, where Miss Jarvis’ mother taught Sunday school now houses a museum and is known as the International Mother’s Day Shrine. The structure was built in 1873. The International Mother’s Day Shrine Foundation was established in 1972. The group exists to “preserve, promote and develop through education, the Spirit of Motherhood, as exemplified by the lives of Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis and Anna Jarvis, and the institution of Mother’s Day that they established.”
Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, is the International Mother’s Day Shrine. Photo from the West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress.
Learn More
Dave Stotts tells the story of Anna Jarvis in this video.
Find other resources at Homeschool History.
