The Boston origins of Mother’s Day
Julia Ward Howe
Text excerpted from The Boston Guardian
(Robert Whitcomb, New England Diary’s editor, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Mother’s Day got its start on Beacon Street in Boston’s Back Bay celebrating not only mothers but peace.
Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), who lived most of her life at 241 Beacon Street, began advocating a “Mother’s Day” in the 1870s.
The ancient Greeks held spring ceremonies for Rhea, mother of gods, and in the 1600s the English had a “Mothering Day”, where servants were given the fourth Sunday of Lent off to bring cakes to their mothers.
America’s Mother’s Day, however, started with Howe.
Howe was not an average mother.
She was an activist, an abolitionist, a women’s suffrage advocate and a writer who clashed with her prominent transcendentalist husband Samuel Gridley Howe over his wish that she shun public life. According to her diary, he beat her. She considered divorcing him on various occasions but never did.
1915 Mother’s Day card. Of course, some may have more nuanced views of their mothers.
