Albion, Michigan, held a Mother’s Day observance on 13 May 1877. The event took place during a dispute connected with the temperance movement and is remembered as one of the early American observances devoted to mothers.
According to the traditional account, Albion pioneer Juliet Calhoun Blakeley stepped in to complete a church sermon after the Reverend Myron Daughterty became distressed by an incident involving anti-temperance forces. Blakeley urged other mothers to join her in responding to the conflict and promoting moral influence.
Her sons were reportedly moved by the event and later encouraged business contacts to honor their own mothers. In the early 1880s, the Methodist Episcopal Church in Albion began setting aside the second Sunday in May to recognize mothers’ contributions. The 1877 observance therefore predates Anna Jarvis’s nationally successful campaign.
Albion’s event should not be confused with Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day for Peace” observances in Boston during the 1870s, or with the first official service associated with Anna Jarvis in West Virginia in 1908. These were separate early strands in the holiday’s history.