Mother’s Day: It's West(ern) Virginia Roots
Mother's Day in Appalachia
Mother’s Day in Appalachia
(Olga Sibert, Reckonin’) - Mother’s Day has particularly deep roots in Appalachia, especially West Virginia, where the modern holiday originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Ann Reeves Jarvis (known as “Mother Jarvis”), an Appalachian homemaker from what is now West Virginia, organized “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” starting in 1858. These clubs focused on improving sanitation, child care, and health in the region and later aided soldiers from both sides during the Civil War. After her death in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis held the first formal Mother’s Day church service on May 10, 1908, at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. She decorated it with white carnations (her mother’s favorite flower) and campaigned to make it a national holiday, which President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed in 1914.
The International Mother’s Day Shrine at that same church in Grafton still hosts an annual service and is open for tours, preserving this Appalachian birthplace of the holiday.
Some enduring Appalachian Mother’s Day traditions are…