Who Invented Mother's Day

The Idea of Mother's Day is to Honor Mothers, Not to Buy Things

Who Invented Mother’s Day? Most of us have a treasury of nice memories of our mothers. Even those of us who do not usually had some type mother figure in our lives who provided us with a safe haven, a comforting shoulder to cry on, and good advice when we needed to make a difficult decision. Perhaps a sister, aunt, grandmother, neighbor, or close friend.

It may surprise you to know that the woman who is responsible for Mother’s Day was never a mother, herself, but she was 
a daughter who loved her own mother dearly. Anna M. Jarvis was a school teacher who never married; the daughter of a Methodist minister. When her mother became ill, Miss Jarvis was her devoted caretaker for 15 years, until the mother’s death in 1905.

After her loss, Miss Jarvis set out to find a permanent way to honor the memory of her mother, and came up with the idea 
of a special day to honor ALL mothers, not just her own. Unfortunately, the idea of a national day to honor mothers did not catch on easily. For several years, Miss Jarvis waged a letter-writing campaign and a barrage of letters from she and her friends began to arrive at the homes of influential people, all the way up to the president, himself.

Miss Jarvis coined the name, “Mother’s Day,” and obtained a copyright for the name from the U.S. Patent Office. Finally, 
after years of speeches and letter writing, her efforts paid off, and Mother’s Day became a national observance when President Woodrow Wilson signed it into effect in 1914.