Anna Jarvis

1864 - 1948

Anna Jarvis was an American social activist who is generally recognized as the founder of the legal holiday known as Mother’s Day. Jarvis also headed the Mother’s Day International Association, which she incorporated in 1912 to guide the annual observance of Mother’s Day and preserve the integrity of the holiday in the face of what she considered to be commercial exploitation by businesses and distortion by political and social movements. In 1914, Pres. Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday in the United States. Near the end of her life, having largely failed to prevent such supposed desecrations of her holiday, Jarvis vigorously (but unsuccessfully) campaigned for the legal cancellation of Mother’s Day in the United States.