Introduction - Mother's Day: Topics In Chronicling America

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4. Mother's Day: Topics in Chronicling America
5. Introduction

Mother's Day: Topics in Chronicling America Mother's Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family, motherhood, and the influence of mothers in society. This guide provides access to materials related to “Mother's Day” in the Chronicling America digital collection of historic newspapers.

• Introduction
• Search Strategies & Selected Articles

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About Chronicling America

Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

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Introduction

In 1908, Anna Jarvis holds a memorial service at a West Virginia church to honor her mother, Mrs. Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis, who passed away three years prior. Philadelphia newspaper publishers latch onto the idea and widely promote a day for honoring mothers, to be held on the second Sunday of the month of May. Read more about it!

The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.

The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.

Timeline

May 10, 1908	Miss Anna Jarvis invites friends to honor her mother, Mrs. Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis at a ceremony in St. Andrew's Methodist Church, Grafton, West Virginia.
1910	West Virginia passes a law designating the holiday and other states follow suit.
May 8, 1914	U.S. Congress passes a law that states the second Sunday in May is to be celebrated as Mother's Day.
May 9, 1914	U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issues a proclamation declaring the first national Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

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• Last Updated: Jun 12, 2025 1:49 PM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-mothers-day
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