We can all thank Typhoid Fever for Mother's Day

By Chuck Thompson | The Sunday Column

OPINION — Happy Typhoid Fever Day!

You can thank Typhoid Fever for Mother’s Day. As grim as that sounds, it’s true; to an extent.

The holiday, where we honor mothers and grandmothers across the United States, we can trace the origins of the holiday, eventually exploited by the flower and card industry, back to a typhoid outbreak during The American Civil War.

Ann Jarvis, the mother of Anna Jarvis, who would later be giving credit for creating what we know as Mother’s Day, organized Mother's Day Work Clubs in West Virginia, to improve sanitation and health for both Union and Confederate encampments undergoing a typhoid outbreak during the Civil War.

After the war, Ann Jarvis created events where mothers of former Union and Confederate soldiers would come together to promote unity and peace.

While other people pushed for recognition for mothers, in one way or another, such as Julia Howe, Juliet Calhoun Blakeley and Frank Herting, it was Ann’s daughter, Anna Jarvis (not to be confused with her mother Ann), that eventually lobbied states and congress to establish a national day to honor mothers. Complete with a proclamation signed by President Woodrow Wilson in May of 1914, declaring the second Sunday of May to be known as officially Mother’s Day.

That first Mother’s Day was held on Sunday May 9th.

Anna, who never married nor had children herself, is given credit for continuing her mother’s work and helping evolve an idea that started with treating soldiers with Typhoid Fever, into what we know today as Mother’s Day.

Later in life, Anna Jarvis grew to regret her lobbying to create the national holiday by the 1930’s, as she claimed it had become too commercialized, with greeting card companies and florists profiting immensely from the national holiday.

Anna eventually was placed in a sanatorium and stayed there until her death in 1948. It was rumored that florist paid her bills to stay at the sanatorium.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day this year, be it our mother, grandmother, the mother of your children or whomever, remember that it was because of Typhoid Fever that a group of Mothers came together to create a group called Mother's Day Work Club to make sure people knew they were moms on a mission to treat Typhoid Fever among Northern and Southern soldiers, alike.

Happy Typhoid Fever Day. And call your mom (for those of you that can) and the rest of us will hold a special place in our hearts for our mothers that sacrificed their time, energy and sleep to care for us as children, so that we can take one day a year to thank them for their dedication to raising all of us little rascals.

Happy Mother’s Day. You are loved.

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Chuck Thompson is a reporter and columnist for The Shelby Independent.

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