Mother's Day in the United States was first proclaimed in 1870 in Boston by
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, and Howe called for it
to be observed each year nationally in 1872. As originally envisioned,
Howe's "Mother's Day" was a call for pacifism and disarmament by women.
The original Mother's Day Proclamation was as follows:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonour,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Early "Mother's Day" was mostly marked by women's peace groups. A
common early activity was the meeting of groups of mothers whose sons had
fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War ...
In 1907, Mother's Day was first celebrated in a small, private way
by Anna Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia, to commemorate the anniversary
of her mother's death two years earlier on 9 May 1905.
Jarvis's mother, also named Anna Jarvis, had been active in Mother's Day campaigns for peace
and worker's safety and health. The younger Jarvis launched a quest to get
wider recognition of Mother's Day.
The celebration organized by Jarvis on 10 May 1908 involved 407 children with their mothers
at the Andrew's Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton (this church is now the International Mother's Day Shrine).
Grafton is, thus, the place recognized as the birthplace of Mother's Day.
As the custom of Mother's Day spread, the emphasis shifted from the
pacifism and reform movements to a general appreciation of mothers.
The first official recognition of the holiday was by West Virginia in
1910. A proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day
was signed by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson on 14 May 1914.
Info from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day_%28United_States%29
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