The following article comes to us from APS member Art Lizotte, who specializes in Mother's Day philately. In the piece, Art traces the origins of Mother's Day, founder Anna Jarvis' legal battle to protect her trademark, and how it all connects back to philately. You can read more about Mother's Day philately from Art here.

When I decided to make Mother’s Day my philatelic focus, I didn’t know where it would take me. I knew the U.S. commemorated the 20th anniversary of the first presidential proclamation in 1934 with Scott 737-38, but that was about it. I created a few searches on eBay and started buying almost anything that celebrated or seemed associated with Mother’s Day. I soon discovered that coupled with a focus is the challenge of what to include and exclude from the collection. And so, when I purchased a Parent’s Day postcard, I wondered if there was a connection with Mother’s Day. There was, but not in the way you might think.

Several early Mother's Day postcards, sent 1912-1916. Courtesy of the author.

The earliest Mother’s Day material is found in postcards. Numerous publishers produced them, but the Westminster Press, a publishing agency of the Presbyterian church, was most prolific and consistent. They produced Mother’s Day postcards that invited mothers to a special service dedicated to them each year starting in 1912. Most Protestant denominations used them. 

Anna Jarvis, who launched her Mother’s Day movement in 1908, surely didn’t object to the advertisement, though this wouldn’t last. During the early years of the movement, there were several organizations that worked to shape the new celebration. One example is how the Grand Army of the Republic designated it one of the patriotic holidays it celebrated, alongside Memorial Day and Flag Day. Evangelists often held a Mother’s Day when they held events in a city, even though that day fell in months other than May. This sort of unwanted adaptation led Jarvis to seek legal protection for her movement.

An ad for Mother's Day postcards and other souvenirs, published by the Methodist Book Concern in 1915. Courtesy of the author.

In 1912, Jarvis sought and received trademarks for Mother’s Day from the U.S. Patent Office. Now that she had some legal protection for Mother’s Day, she targeted those whom she deemed to be benefiting financially from her movement. One thing that Jarvis despised was people or organizations that were profiting from her Mother’s Day. 

Front and back of a Mother's Day postcard sent in 1916. The card printed by the Westminster Press, presumably during their legal battle with Anna Jarvis. Courtesy of the author.

Jarvis set her sights on the Westminster Press in 1915 to cease and desist the use of their Mother’s Day items, threatening legal action if they did not. The debate went on for at least a year and by the middle of 1916, the Press decided to stop publishing Mother’s Day material. Instead, they attempted to promote the idea of Parent’s Day.

The notion of a parent’s day had been around since the beginning of Jarvis’ movement. Often preachers would preach to mothers on one Sunday and to fathers the next. Some preachers combined the two topics – motherhood and fatherhood – into a parent’s day sermon. So, to promote Parent’s Day seemed a logical alternative.

In 1917, the Westminster Press published Parent’s Day postcards using the pink rose as its emblem, and the Bible verse, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” Clearly, the verse supported Parent’s Day and the rose seemed appropriate since it was often a substitute for when carnation supplies were exhausted. Undoubtedly to Jarvis’ delight, the notion of a Parent’s Day never took root and thus ended the Westminster Press’ attempt to supplant Mother's Day with Parent’s Day in the same year it began.

Front and back of a Westminster Press postcard celebrating Parent's Day; note the inclusion of the pink rose vs. the white carnation of previous Mother's Day postcards. Courtesy of the author.

But what about the stamp, you ask? After all, we are philatelists, not deltiologists. My limited research suggests that only about a third of the postcards were sent through the postal system.  Churches were local organizations and often had limited funds, which is why many were handed out personally, some as invitations and some as souvenirs, leaving many unused examples for collectors today.

Yet, for those that were mailed, stamps from the Washington-Franklin series are the usual suspects. The postage rate for a postcard was one cent up until November 1917, when it was increased to two cents to generate revenue for the war. From 1912 through 1919, there are 28 different one cent stamps and six two cent stamps to choose from, though you would be very lucky to find one franked with a coil stamp or even the very special blue paper version. Another candidate would be the Panama-Pacific Expo issue, and one of these would be truly a wonderful find.

Now you may also be asking, did a church ever use a postal card for an invitation? While I have a few in my collection from years much later, the early days of the Mother’s Day movement were dominated by the especially printed Mother’s Day invitations. 

In closing, the prolific era of Mother’s Day invitation postcards ends mostly with World War I, and with the Westminster Press no longer printing invitation postcards. Yes, churches in subsequent years had them printed by other printers, but it was in the early years of the movement when they were used most to promote the new celebration, not to mention an attempt at increasing church and Sunday school attendance.

References

Presbyterian Historical Society, Anna Jarvis Mother’s Day archive file MS_P92cpuc, Philadelphia, PA

Antolini, Katherine Lane, Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for the Control of Mother's Day (Morgantown WV, West Virginia University Press, 2014)

Beecher, Henry W. and Wawrukiewicz, Anthony S., U. S. Domestic Postal Rates, 1872-1999, revised second edition, (CAMA Publishing Company, Portland, 1999)

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