One West Virginia woman paved the road for the country to collectively say, “Happy Mother’s Day.”

While Anna M. Jarvis never became a mother, she dedicated her life to fulfill her own mother’s dream of a day honoring mothers.

She was born in Taylor County in 1864 as the ninth of 11 children to Ann Marie and Granville Jarvis. When she was one year old, her family moved to Grafton. In 1881, she enrolled at the Augusta Female Academy in Staunton, Virginia, now known as Mary Baldwin College. After finishing her academics, she returned to Grafton where she was a teacher for seven years.

Jarvis was only 12-years-old when she got the inspiration for Mother’s Day. Her mother said a class prayer concluding a lesson on mothers of the bible.

“I hope that someone sometime will found a memorial mother’s day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it,” her mother said.

Never forgetting those words, she recalled the prayer at her mother’s graveside in 1905.

“By the grace of God, you shall have that Mothers Day,” Jarvis’ brother Claude overheard her say.

During her resolve to pay tribute to her own mother, Jarvis discovered adult children throughout the United States were neglecting their parents. She became more determined than ever in her quest and in 1907, began an aggressive campaign to establish a National Mothers Day. She led a small tribute for her mother at Andrews Methodist Church on the second anniversary of her death. The following year, Mother’s Day was also celebrated in her own city of Philadelphia.

Though Jarvis and her supporters wrote hundreds of letters to those in power, it wasn’t until merchant and philanthropist, John Wana-maker of Philadelphia through his weight behind the cause that the movement gained momentum.In 1909, forty-five states including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico observed the day with services. Jarvis started the tradition of wearing the red or white carnations, her mother’s favorite flower. To Jarvis, the white carnation represented the purity of a mother’s heart and was to be worn to honor deceased mothers while the red honored those living.

Mother’s Day was celebrated in almost every state of the Union by 1911 and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Mother’s Day as a national holiday to be recognized each year on the second Sunday of May.

While Jarvis dedicated years to see her dream of honoring mothers realized, in the end she felt only disappointment for having started the tradition because of the commercialism the event drew. Jarvis meant for children to pay homage to those who gave them life by spending time with them, expressing love and gratitude. She hated the commercialization of the day, so much so that she regretted starting the tradition of Mothers Day. 
Jarvis died on Nov. 24, 1948 and is buried beside her mother in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. On the day of her funeral, the bell on the Andrews Church in Grafton was tolled eighty-four times in her honor.