YOUR LAST WARNING:  DON’T FORGET IT’S MOTHER’S DAY TOMORROW: And in case you are wondering who the original “mother” in Mother’s Day was, it was Ann Maria Jarvis (1832-1905) (mother of Mother’s Day founder Anna Marie Jarvis). The elder Jarvis was in fact a remarkable woman. She bore at least 11 children, only four of whom survived to adulthood (although, alas, that didn’t make her remarkable for the time). For Jarvis, her losses were a call to improve health conditions in Taylor County in what is now West Virginia. She organized “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to raise money for medicine, care for sick mothers, inspect milk, and train women about how to deal with disease. This was before we all got used to the government doing this for us.

During the Civil War, she wanted these clubs to provide aid to fallen soldiers, no matter which side of war they had been fighting for. She is said to have provided the only prayer for the body of the first Union soldier to be killed by Confederate soldiers, Thornsbury Bailey Brown.

Weirdly, her daughter Anna regretted having been the founder of Mother’s Day. She resented any commerciality being associated with it. Printed Mother’s Day cards made her angry. She even tried to get official recognition of the day rescinded.  She failed.