Mother's Day started in the 1850's, when West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis - the mother of Anna Jarvis - held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and to try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865.
Anna Jarvis never had children of her own, but the 1905 death of her own mother inspired her to organize the first Mother's Day in 1908. On May 10 of that year, families gathered at events in Jarvis' hometown of Grafton, West Virginia - at a church now renamed the International Mother's Day Shrine - as well as in Philadelphia where Jarvis lived at the time, and in several other cities.
Largely through Jarvis' efforts, Mother's Day came to be observed in a growing number of cities and states until U.S. President Woodrow Wilson officially set aside the second Sunday in May in 1914 for the holiday. It wasn't to celebrate all mothers. It was to celebrate the best mother you've ever known - your mother - as a son or a daughter.
But the holiday has more somber roots. It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace. And when the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion, Anna Jarvis, gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium.
Anna Jarvis' idea of an intimate Mother's Day quickly became a commercial gold mine centering on the buying and giving of flowers, candles, and greeting cards - a development that deeply disturbed Jarvis. She set about dedicating herself and her sizable inheritance to returning Mother's Day to its reverent roots.
As Mother's Day turns 100 this year, it's known mostly as a time for brunches, gifts, cards, and general outpourings of love and appreciation.
--Extracted from National Geographic Online Magazine article entitled "Mother's Day Turns 100 - Its Surprisingly Dark History," dated May 11, 2014.