Mother’s Day was created by a social activist who later disowned the holiday and died in West Chester fighting against its rampant commercialization, writes Julia Shipley for The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Anna Reeves Jarvis came up with the idea after the death of her mother. She convinced John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia department store founder, to fund the celebration that honored “the sacrifices mothers make for their children.” 

Subsequently, in 1908, 400 people attended a service where Jarvis’ mother was buried. At the same time, 15,000 individuals gathered for the inaugural Mother’s Day celebration at Wanamaker’s auditorium in Philadelphia. 

By the following year, the idea had spread throughout the nation, as thousands upon thousands of people “found Mother’s Day a blessing, a comfort, and an uplift,” according to Jarvis. 

In 1914, Mother’s Day was officially sanctioned by Congress. Six years later, Jarvis had disowned her creation and spent the next decades of her life campaigning against the rampant commercialism and the purchases of candy, flowers, and cards. 

She died in 1948 at the Marshall Square Sanitarium, in West Chester. 

Read more about Anna Reeves Jarvis in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

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