President Woodrow Wilson issued the first national Mother’s Day proclamation on May 9, 1914.
Wilson’s proclamation followed years of campaigning by Anna Jarvis, who wanted a designated day for honoring mothers. Congress had passed a joint resolution asking the president to issue the proclamation, and Wilson called on Americans to display the flag in recognition of mothers whose sons had died in war.
The proclamation established the second Sunday in May as the national observance rather than fixing Mother’s Day to one numerical date every year. In 1914, that Sunday was May 10, while the proclamation itself was issued one day earlier, on May 9.
That distinction causes a frequent error: May 10, 1914, was the first officially observed Mother’s Day under the new national designation, but May 9, 1914, was the date of Wilson’s proclamation.