Since 1915, we have set aside the second Sunday in May to honor our Mothers. Although there are several opinions as to how this day came about, the one that has lasted is the story of Anna Reeves Jarvis.
Jarvis asked her minister in West Virginia to give a sermon in memory of her mother in 1907, after her mother’s death in May of 1905. On the same Sunday, the minister at a church in Philadelphia, Pa., where Jarvis’s dad had formerly ministered, honored Mrs. Jarvis and all mothers with a special Mothers’ Day Service.
Jarvis began to write to congressmen, urging that they set aside a day to honor Mothers. In 1910, West Virginia Gov. Glasscock proclaimed a statewide Mother’s Day. The next year every state celebrated it. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law a resolution making the second Sunday in May the national Mother’s Day.
Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis, Anna Jarvis’s mother, had been instrumental in forming the Mother’s Day Friendship Clubs to work with women to teach the importance of sanitation. The women who belonged to the group refused to take sides during the Civil War and provided nursing service and taught sanitation methods which have been accredited to saving many soldiers’ lives.
In 1872, Julia Ward Howe began the Mothers Day for Peace celebration in Boston. The day set aside for honoring peace, motherhood and womanhood was celebrated for 10 years.
There is also a claim by a service organization that one of their own was responsible for getting Mother’s Day as an official holiday.
Regardless of who gets the credit for bringing this day about, it is a good day to remember our mothers. Some will bring gifts, others will call, and yet others will write poems.
This year, Hallmark expects 155 million cards to be sent. They have been producing Mother’s Day cards since the early 1900s.

journal-advocate.com