If you have ever taken a tour of Elfreth’s Alley Museum, you may remember our bedroom exhibit in House #126, which is dedicated to telling the story of the Kolb family that lived there beginning in 1847. Lewis and Mary Kolb were German immigrants who ran a shoemaking business inside their home, like many Alley residents before and after them. Mary Kolb was the mother of eight children and five of them were born in that very bedroom. In her lifetime, she gave birth to four girls and three boys: Constantina, Amelia, Matilda, Maria, Bertram, Washington, and Lewis Jr. Sadly one of her children, Maria, died in the house when she was just eight months old. Mary gave birth to her eight children without the advances in medical science many (but not all) women have available to them today, and pregnancy was often dangerous for both mother and baby. In both the 18th and 19th centuries, the #1 cause of death for women was childbirth.
What many may not know is that the holiday of Mother’s Day was itself born right here in the city of Philadelphia, founded by Anna Maria Jarvis in 1908 - 117 years ago!
Anna Maria Jarvis was born to Granville and Ann Reeves Jarvis on May 1, 1864, in West Virginia, the ninth child born into the family - two more siblings were born after her. Seven of her ten siblings died in infancy or early childhood. Her birthplace, today known as the Anna Jarvis House, was added the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Anna’s mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, was an active member of the local Methodist Episcopal Church and taught Sunday School. At the close of one of her lessons in 1876, Ann Reeves Jarvis made a statement that made a deep and lasting impression on her then 12-year-old daughter Anna:
“I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”
When she grew up, Anna was encouraged by her mother to pursue higher education, attending the Augusta Female Seminary in Virginia, which is now known as Mary Baldwin University. Anna then moved to the city of Philadelphia, where her brother also lived. She became the first woman to work as a literary and advertising editor for the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. After her father died in 1902, Anna urged her mother to come live with her and her brother in the city, which she did in 1904. However, Ann Reeves Jarvis developed heart disease and was cared for by her loving daughter before passing away on May 9, 1905. She is buried in Philadelphia’s West Laurel Hill Cemetery.
On May 10, 1908, three years after her mother's death, Anna Jarvis held a memorial ceremony to honor her mother and all the mothers of the world in Philadelphia at the Wanamaker's Store Auditorium. In her speech, she described her reasons for choosing the white carnation as the symbol of Mother’s Day:
“Its whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love; its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers. The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying. When I selected this flower, I was remembering my mother's bed of white pinks.”
The country immediately took Mother’s Day to their hearts, but like many holidays it became commercialized as a way for businesses to sell more products. Anna Jarvis deplored what Mother’s Day was becoming, writing:
“A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”
While others profited financially from the holiday, Jarvis did not. In 1943, she began organizing a petition to rescind Mother's Day. However, these efforts were halted when she was placed in the Marshall Square Sanitarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania due to her declining health. People connected with the floral and greeting card industries paid the medical bills for her care. Anna Jarvis died on November 24, 1948, and was buried next to her mother, sister, and brother at West Laurel Hill Cemetery. She was 84 years old when she died. Anna Maria Jarvis never married or had any children of her own, but she never forgot the bond she forged with her own mother and never stopped wishing that the bonds we all share with our mothers (and grandmothers, and mother-figures) would be recognized, respected, and said out loud and in person.
While Mother’s Day is different today than how she originally intended it, Anna Maria Jarvis’s legacy of honoring the mothers of the world will never be forgotten, especially in Philadelphia. Today, a historical marker commemorating Anna and the founding of Mother’s Day stands proudly outside of City Hall, near the location where she made her first speech at Wanamaker’s (most recently known as Macy’s) 117 years ago.
Learn more about the mothers of Elfreth’s Alley by visiting our museum houses, open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 12pm-4pm. Admission is only $3 for adults and $2 for children ages 7-12.
Have you ever been curious about what all the other houses on Elfreth’s Alley look like inside? You’re in luck! Tickets are now on sale for our annual fundraiser Elfreth’s Alley Day: A Neighborhood Fete on Saturday, June 7th! Learn more and buy your tickets here. All ticket sales go towards the continued preservation of Elfreth’s Alley, our nation’s oldest continuously inhabited residential street!