Another One?
Before President Wilson declared Mother’s Day an official U.S. holiday in 1914, there had been many previous incarnations of “Mom’s Events” before the turn of the century. “As early as the 1850s, West Virginia women’s organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis held Mother’s Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College.” (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/05/110511-mothers-day-dark-history-jarvis-nation-gifts-facts/) Groups of Mom’s gathered to help each other in caring for children. Other guilds were activists who aided in rehabilitation for injured soldiers from the Civil War and...
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