Mothers were officially honored this day, May 9, 1914, with the first National Mother’s Day Proclamation, signed by President Woodrow Wilson. It designated the second Sunday in May as a "public expression of... love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” This was due to the life-long efforts of Anna Jarvis, the daughter of a Methodist minister in West Virginia. She organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs to care for wounded Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate, raised money for medicine, inspected bottled milk, improved sanitation and hired women to care for families where mothers suffered from tuberculosis.
Permission to use with acknowledgment: American Minute with Bill Federer. (Amerisearch, Inc., P.O. Box 20163, St. Louis, MO 63123, 1-888-USA-WORD, www.amerisearch.net)
Wilson, (Thomas) Woodrow. May 9, 1914, in a Proclamation of Mother’s Day. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, Inc., prepared under the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing, of the House and Senate, pursuant to an Act of the FiftySecond Congress of the United States, 1893, 1923), Vol. XVI, p. 7941.
