On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson (above) issued a
presidential proclamation that officially established the first
national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers.
The idea for a “Mother’s Day” is credited by some to Julia Ward
Howe (1872) and by others to Anna Jarvis (1907), who both
suggested a holiday dedicated to a day of peace.
Many individual states celebrated Mother’s Day by 1911, but it
was not until Wilson lobbied Congress in 1914 that Mother’s
Day was officially set on the second Sunday of every May.
In his first Mother’s Day proclamation, Wilson stated that the
holiday offered a chance to “[publicly express] our love and
reverence for the mothers of our country.”
J. C. Leyendecker painted ‘Pot of Hyacinths’ to be used
on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post’s May 30, 1914
issue.
