Celebrating Mother's Day
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First Observance of Mother's Day
The first known observance of Mother's Day in the U.S. occurred
in Albion, Michigan, on 13 May 1877, the second Sunday of the month.
According to local legend, Albion pioneer, Juliet Calhoun Blakeley,
stepped up to complete the sermon of the Rev. Myron Daughterty, who
was distraught because an anti-temperance group had forced his son
and two other temperance advocates to spend the night in a saloon
and become publicly drunk. In the pulpit, Blakeley called on other
mothers to join her. Blakeley's two sons, both travelling salesmen,
were so moved that they vowed to return each year to pay tribute to
her and embarked on a campaign to urge their business contacts to do
likewise. At their urging, in the early 1880s, the Methodist
Episcopal Church in Albion set aside the second Sunday in May to
recognize the special contributions of mothers. In 1907, Mother's
Day was first celebrated in a small, private way by Anna Jarvis in
Grafton, West Virginia, to commemorate the anniversary of her
mother's death two years earlier on 9 May 1905. Jarvis's mother,
also named Anna Jarvis, had been active in Mother's Day campaigns
for peace and worker's safety and health. The younger Jarvis
launched a quest to get wider recognition of Mother's Day. The
celebration organized by Jarvis on 10 May 1908 involved 407 children
with their mothers at the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in
Grafton (this church is now the International Mother's Day Shrine).
Grafton is, thus, the place recognized as the birthplace of Mother's
Day. The holiday was declared officially by states beginning in
1912, and in 1914 the President, Woodrow Wilson, declared the first
national Mother's Day.
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