Mother’s Day in Albion / Mother’s Day

On May 13, 1877, the second Sunday of the month, Juliet Calhoun Blakeley stepped into the pulpit of the Methodist-Episcopal Church and completed the sermon for the Reverend Myron Daugherty. According to local legend, Daugherty was distraught because an antitemperance group had forced his son to spend the night in a saloon. Proud of their mother’s achievement, Charles and Moses Blakeley encouraged others to pay tribute to their mothers. In the 1880s the Albion Methodist church began celebrating Mother’s Day in Blakeley’s honor.

The official observance of Mother’s Day resulted from the efforts of Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia. In 1868 her mother had organized a Mother’s Friendship Day in a West Virginia town to unite Confederate and Union families after the Civil War. Anna Reeves Jarvis died on the second Sunday in May 1905. In 1907 her daughter began promoting the second Sunday in May as a holiday to honor mothers. Following an act of Congress in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May Mother’s Day.

Legend. The state marker at this site records the story as local legend rather than established fact; the wording below is the marker’s own.

Sources: Michigan History Center — Michigan Historical Markers.

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