Qualla: International Mother's Day Shrine

International Mother's Day Shrine: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Anna Jarvis lost her mother on May 9, 1905. Three years later, on the anniversary of that loss, she organized a memorial service at Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia - the church where her mother, Ann Maria Reeves Jarvis, had taught Sunday school for more than two decades. Anna handed out white carnations, her mother's favorite flower. She called the service Mother's Day. Within four years, forty-five states, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Canada, and Mexico were celebrating it. By 1914, President Woodrow Wilson had signed a proclamation making it official. The small brick Romanesque Revival church in Grafton became the holiday's mother church. Today it is the International Mother's Day Shrine - a building dedicated to one daughter's grief that became the world's annual day for thanking mothers.

International Mother's Day Shrine: The Church Before the Shrine

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church was built in Grafton and dedicated on March 16, 1873 by Bishop Edward Gayer Andrews of the Methodist Episcopal Church - the man for whom the building was named. The dedication came at a moment when Grafton, a railroad town and B&O junction, was ...

International Mother's Day Shrine: From Memorial to Movement

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Ann Maria died in 1905, Anna Jarvis was forty-one, unmarried, and devastated. The first Mother's Day memorial service at Andrews Methodist on May 10, 1908 was for her mother specifically. The second service that same day, organized by John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, brought ...

International Mother's Day Shrine: Wilson, 1914, and What Came Next

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson signed the proclamation that made Mother's Day official, calling on Americans to fly the flag on the second Sunday in May 'as a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.' That was the victory Anna Jarvis h...

International Mother's Day Shrine: The Shrine in Grafton

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 15, 1962, the congregation incorporated Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church as the International Mother's Day Shrine - formally dedicating the building to all mothers. On October 5, 1992, the shrine was designated a National Historic Landmark, the highest level of federal h...