In the archives of the Freeborn County Historical Museum Library are many post cards and fancier cards once used as greetings or remembrances for special days on the calendar. Those occasions include Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, birthdays, weddings and especially St. Valentine’s Day. And within this collection of cards from an era when a penny stamp could be used to mail a sincere or humorous greeting anywhere in the nation are a few intended for Mother’s Day.

This particular American holiday had its origins in several ways.

One was a movement to establish an observance to reconcile the mothers from the northern and southern parts of the nation who had sons who fought or died during the Civil War. A few special occasions took place during the 1870s and 1880s, then this concept died out.

Another concept created by Ann Jarvis in 1868 was to have a Mother’s Friendship Day. Later she advocated an annual national holiday to honor all mothers. However, she died in 1905 before this observance really became popular.

Yet, the Jarvis concept was to be promoted and become a reality thanks to her daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis. As a result, the first real observance of Mother’s Day was held on May 10, 1908, at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, W. Va., where Anna’s mother had been a Sunday School teacher.

West Virginia became the first state to officially declare Mother’s Day to be a special holiday in 1910. All other states soon took the same action. On May 8, 1914, Congress passed a law declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. During the following day President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation for the first national Mother’s Day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the issuance of a postage stamp for Mother’s Day in 1934.

The Grafton church is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine and a National Historic Landmark.

This particular holiday or observance is represented by a flower in two colors. Tradition says this flower is a carnation. A red carnation is for a living mother, and a white one is for a deceased mother.

Here in Albert Lea the first official observance of Mother’s Day, according to the Tribune, came with the publication of a five stanza poem reprinted from the Christian Herald Magazine on the front page of the Saturday, May 9, 1914, issue. (In that era the Tribune published on Saturdays and didn’t have a Sunday edition.) Also, there was an announcement that Mother’s Day would be a part of the services at First Baptist Church the following day.

— Graphics courtesy Freeborn County Historical Museum