Which West Virginia woman organized a 1908 Father's Day memorial service in Fairmont?

Grace Golden Clayton organized a Father's Day memorial service in Fairmont, West Virginia, in 1908.

Clayton suggested the service after a deadly mine explosion in nearby Monongah killed hundreds of men, leaving many children without fathers. The memorial was held at Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South in Fairmont on July 5, 1908. It was intended chiefly to honor the bereaved families and the fathers who had died, rather than to launch a commercial holiday.

Clayton's observance is often overlooked because Sonora Smart Dodd's 1910 campaign in Spokane became the better-known movement behind the national holiday. The two events had different origins and purposes, and Dodd apparently did not know about the Fairmont service when she began her campaign.

Grace Golden Clayton is also sometimes confused with Anna Jarvis, who was associated with the creation of Mother's Day. Clayton's Fairmont service is an important early chapter in Father's Day history.