More than a century ago, a young Virginia mother, Mrs. Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis, formed Mother’s Day Work Clubs in 1858 to improve health and sanitation conditions in various towns in West Virginia. Then, after her death, her daughter, Miss Anna Jarvis, worked tirelessly to promote the idea of a Mother’s Day. On the second anniversary of her mother’s death (in 1906), friends of Mrs. Anna M. Jarvis at the Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, WV held a brief unofficial Mother’s Day service. Over the next year, Miss Jarvis created the Official Mother’s Day Committee. On the third anniversary of her mother’s death, Anna Jarvis asked the congregation of Andrews Methodist Church to present a well-planned, official, and authentic program in the morning of May 10, 1908. Parishioners were urged to write letters of love to their mothers, if living, and to wear a white carnation, if deceased. Red carnations were to be worn for a living mother. This was publicized by the Philadelphia newspapers, one of which printed five million copies. In 1910, the governor of West Virginia issued a proclamation and requested that Sunday, May 5 be observed in all churches as Mother’s Day. In 1912, the General Conference of the Methodist Church recognized Miss Anna Jarvis as the founder of Mother’s Day. In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution passed by the U.S. Congress confirming and setting aside the second Sunday of May to be observed annually as Mother’s Day. The display of the American Flag was part of this resolution in recognition of mothers as source of the country’s strength.
