During the same period women’s rights were being fought for in the States, the celebration of mothers came into existence.

A sad tale of loss, compassion and honour, TIME reported on the traces of the origins of Mother’s Day all the way back to 1876, when Ann Jarvis proclaimed:

I hope and pray 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.

Years later – May 10, 1908, to be exact – Ann’s daughter Anna (above) “sent 500 white carnations to Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in her hometown of Grafton, W.Va., in honour of her late mother,” explains TIME:

That date, on which she also held a celebration in Philadelphia, where she lived at the time, is considered to be America’s first Mother’s Day celebration.

In 2017, Mother’s Day will be marked on Sunday, May 14.

[A casual reminder, for those of you who have missed the memo, that you could score a free R2 000 gift HERE.]

However, evidence suggests that the elder Jarvis had a slightly different idea to her daughter of what Mother’s Day should entail:

A “Mothers’ Day” — a day for mothers, plural, not a day for one’s own mother — on which mothers would get together for a day of service to help out other mothers who were less fortunate than they were, according to Katharine Lane Antolini, an assistant professor of history and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for the Control of Mother’s Day.

But the reason that Anna focused on her own mother was, according to TIME, a tragic one:

Her experience of motherhood had been infused with sadness. Of the 13 children that she bore, only four lived to adulthood. Her story was not uncommon; an estimated 15 to 30% of infants in that Appalachian region died before their first birthday throughout the 19th and early 20th century, largely due to epidemics that were spread by poor sanitary conditions, according to Antolini’s book.

In 1858, while she was pregnant for the sixth time, Jarvis enlisted the help of her brother Dr. James Reeves, who was involved in treating victims of the typhoid fever epidemic, to try to improve the situation. They organized events at which doctors were invited to lead discussions with local mothers on the latest hygiene practices that could keep their children healthy.

They called the events Mothers’ Day Work Clubs.

But when it came time for Jarvis to lead the charge for a national day for mothers, she left behind that idea of educating mothers. Perhaps it was because she was not a mother herself, Antolini suggests, and thus, “she couldn’t be a leader for a holiday that encourages mothers to be socially active.”

But others also came forward during the same period with the proclamation that they had come up with the idea of Mother’s Day – after all, the concept of multiple discoveries is a real thing.

The full story, which you can read on TIME here, tells the rest of Jarvis’ story, ending with her death after fighting for all her life for the full credit of Mother’s Day.

Yeah, it’s pretty sad.

[source:time]