Grafton, West Virginia: Where Mother's Day Was Born

Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia is recognized as the birthplace of Mother's Day in America. On May tenth, nineteen oh eight, Anna Jarvis arranged a memorial service here for her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, a community organizer who had run Mothers Friendship clubs during and after the Civil War to help soldiers' families on both sides. The younger Jarvis campaigned tirelessly for a national holiday, and in nineteen fourteen President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation making Mother's Day official.

Jarvis later grew to despise what the holiday became, calling its commercialization a desecration and spending her later years trying unsuccessfully to have the holiday abolished. The church in Grafton has been designated the International Mother's Day Shrine. Anna Jarvis died in nineteen forty-eight in a sanitarium, her sanitarium bills reportedly paid in part by people tied to the flower and greeting card industries she had spent decades condemning.