Anna Maria Jarvis was born on May 1, 1864, in Webster, West Virginia, later becoming the founder of the American Mother's Day holiday.
Anna Maria Jarvis was born on May 1, 1864, in the small town of Webster, in what was then the newly formed state of West Virginia, during the height of the American Civil War. She was one of at least eleven or twelve children born to Ann Reeves Jarvis and Granville E. Jarvis, though only four of her siblings survived to adulthood, a grim reflection of the high childhood mortality rates of the era.
Her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, was a social activist who organized women's brigades to provide relief and care to soldiers on both sides during the Civil War, and who later worked on public health and sanitation initiatives. This upbringing steeped young Anna in a culture of maternal caregiving, community organizing, and social reform that would deeply influence her later life's work.
Anna Jarvis's birth in this particular time and place is historically significant primarily in retrospect: the woman born that day would grow up to become the driving force behind the establishment of Mother's Day as a national holiday in the United States, an achievement inspired directly by her devotion to her own mother. Her early exposure to her mother's activism and the Civil War-era emphasis on maternal sacrifice set the stage for the campaign she would launch decades later.
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