After one lecture in 1876, Ann Reeves Jarvis prayed that somebody would create a day commemorating mothers for their service for humanity, Antolini said. Twelve-year-old Anna Jarvis remembered that.

Not if you’re Anna Jarvis, the woman who founded Mother’s Day back in the early 1900s, then barnstormed all around the nation until President Woodrow Wilson declared in 1914 that the second ...

Twelve-year-old Anna Jarvis remembered that. Her mother died in 1905, and Jarvis, then in her 40s, promised at her gravesite that she’d be the one to answer her prayer.

An undated photo of Anna Jarvis, from Grafton, West Virginia, who promoted and achieved the proclamation of Mother's Day as a national holiday, in honor of her mother, Anna Marie Reeves Jarvis.

The family of Anna Jarvis, the holiday’s founder, are following in their ancestor’s footsteps — by refusing to recognize the controversial date. Jarvis, born in 1864, wanted moms to have a ...

AP Jarvis never married or had children — her devotion to her holiday was her whole life. “Everything she signed was ‘Anna Jarvis, Founder of Mother’s Day,’ ” Antolini said.

Anna Jarvis spent her life combating the day’s commercialism, disrupting candy conventions, hounding public officials—fighting her baby to save it. Gil Troy PublishedMay 14 201712:01AM EDT ...

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Jarvis’ Mother’s Day as a national holiday. If Anna Jarvis hated Mother's Day back then, she would despise it now.

Anna Marie Jarvis lobbied for more than a decade to have her nation remember mothers, in honor of her own mother's wishes. Then, she fought to end it. At the end of the 19th century, her mother ...

And, on May 10, 1908, Jarvis arranged for 500 white carnations, her mom’s favorite flower, to be handed out in a ceremony at the Grafton, W.Va., church where her mother had taught Sunday school.