President Woodrow Wilson officially declared Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1914. His proclamation followed congressional action designating the second Sunday in May for honoring mothers in the United States.
The modern American holiday grew from Anna Jarvis’s campaign after the death of her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, in 1905. Jarvis organized an early official observance at St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908. West Virginia recognized the holiday statewide in 1910, and other states soon followed.
A common mix-up is confusing 1908 with 1914. 1908 marks the first widely recognized celebration associated with Jarvis; 1914 marks the federal national observance. Another related date is May 8, 1914, when Congress passed the resolution requesting a presidential proclamation. Wilson issued that proclamation the next day, setting the holiday on the second Sunday in May.
Jarvis later objected strongly to the holiday’s commercialization, even though her campaign had helped establish it.