Positive News Stories To Start Your Day! 5/12/19

lthough Anna Jarvis is credited with creating the day in 1908, others influenced its creation or created their own versions of the holiday prior to Jarvis. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” calling for women to come together for world peace. With Howe’s backing, Mother’s Day was celebrated in Boston for about a decade. It was known as “Mother’s Peace Day” and was celebrated each June 2. Juliet Calhoun Blakely, a temperance activist, started a Mother’s Day celebration in Albion, Michigan, in the 1870s. Afterward, her sons paid tribute to her and encouraged others to honor their mothers as well. Mary Towles Sasseen and Frank Hering also worked on organizing a Mother’s Day in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia created the official Mother’s Day. Before the Civil War, her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis had organized “Mother’s Day Work Clubs,” which promoted health, cleanliness, and friendship, and taught mothers how to care for children. In 1868, Ann organized “Mothers’ Friendship Day,” where mothers met with former Union and Confederate soldiers in an effort to promote reconciliation. Ann died in 1905, and her daughter Anna held a private memorial service at her mother’s church in on May 12, 1907. She decided to create Mother’s Day to honor the sacrifices that mothers had made for their children.

Jarvis worked to have it more widely celebrated. She hoped to have it added to the national calendar, as she thought most holidays of the time were focused on male achievements. She was supported financially in her efforts by John Wanamaker, a clothing merchant from Philadelphia. In 1908, she helped organize a service at Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. This was the days’ first official celebration and was attended by 407 children and their mothers. The church is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine and is a National Historic Landmark. Thousands also attended a Mother’s Day event at one of Wanamaker’s Philadelphia stores on the day.

Check out our new Donation page. Positive News For You has a fund (We are a 501(c)3 organization, PN4UINC.) for supporting our organization and writers. {{more}}

• Shaq buys 10 pairs of shoes for teen with big feet whose mom can’t afford sneakers

  

• Gilead Pharmaceuticals to donate HIV prevention drug Truvada to 200K uninsured patients for Next 11 Years to Help prevent new hIV infections

• Chobani offers to settle unpaid lunch debt at RI school district
• Sibling rivalry: Twin brothers compete for valedictorian title

  

• LeBron James surprises ‘I Promise School’ students with check for $1 million
• NYC pizzeria waiter returns half-million dollar cashier’s check to retired social worker who failed to tip him

  

• Blind high school student creates Braille menus for local restaurants

• Man Jumps Into New York River to Rescue Dog