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Memorializing Motherhood Anna Jarvis and the Struggle
for Control of Mother s Day 1st Edition Katharine Lane
Antolini Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Katharine Lane Antolini
ISBN(s): 9781938228957, 1938228952
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.79 MB
Year: 2014
Language: english
MEMORIALIZING
MOTHERHOOD
anna jarvis and
the struggle for
the control of
mother’s day

KATHARINE LANE ANTOLINI

Memorializing
Motherhood
 West Virginia and Appalachia
A Series Edited by Ronald L. Lewis, Ken Fones-Wolf,
and Kevin Barksdale

titles in the series

Working Class Radicals:

The Socialist Party in West Virginia, 1898–1920
frederick a. barkey

“They’ll Cut Off Your Project”: A Mingo County Chronicle

huey perry

An Appalachian Reawakening: West Virginia and

the Perils of the New Machine Age, 1945–1972
jerry bruce thomas

An Appalachian New Deal; West Virginia in the Great Depression

jerry bruce thomas

Culture, Class, and Politics in Modern Appalachia

edited by jennifer egolf, ken fones-wolf,
and louis c. martin

Governor William E. Glasscock and Progressive Politics in West Virginia

gary jackson tucker

Matewan Before the Massacre

rebecca j. bailey

Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1881

charles ambler;
introduction by barbara rasmussen

Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongalia Mine Disaster

davitt mcateer

Bringing Down the Mountains

shirley stewart burns

Afflicting the Comfortable

thomas f. stafford

Clash of Loyalties
john shaffer

The Blackwater Chronicle

philip pendleton kennedy;
edited by timothy sweet

Transnational West Virginia

edited by ken fones-wolf
and ronald l. lewis
Memorializing
Motherhood
anna jarvis and
the struggle for control
of mother’s day

Katharine Lane Antolini

morgantown 2014
West Virginia University Press 26506
Copyright 2014 West Virginia University Press
All rights reserved
First edition published 2014 by West Virginia University Press
Printed in the United States of America

21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 123456789

ISBN:

cl 978-1-938228-93-3
epub 978-1-938228-96-4
pdf 978-1-938228-95-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Antolini, Katharine Lane.
Memorializing motherhood : Anna Jarvis and the struggle for control of Mother's Day / Katharine
Lane Antolini. -- First edition.
pages cm -- (West Virginia and Appalachia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-938228-93-3 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 1-938228-93-6 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-
1-938228-96-4 (e-pub) -- ISBN 1-938228-96-0 (e-pub) -- ISBN 978-1-938228-95-7 (pdf ) -- ISBN
1-938228-95-2 (pdf )
1. Mother's Day. 2. Jarvis, Anna, 1864-1948. I. Title.
HQ759.2.A57 2014
394.2628--dc23
2014025852
Art Direction by Than Saffel / WVU Press

Cover design by Kelley Galbreath

Book design by Kelley Galbreath
 to my mother, lala, and mother-in-law, reta—
may I never take your love and guidance for granted.

and to my sons, john michael and cooper—

may you never take my love and guidance for granted.
 Contents
introduction
The Cultural Duality of Mother’s Day
1

chapter one
The Foremothers and Forefather of Mother’s Day
13

chapter t wo
Anna Jarvis and Her Mother’s Day Movement
40

chapter three
“Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”:
The Rivalry of Father’s Day and Parents’ Day
73

chapter four
The American War Mothers and
a Memoir of Mothers’ Day
96

chapter five
A New Mother’s Day for Modern Mothers
124

epilogue
Anna Jarvis’s Final Years and the Burden of
the Mother’s Day Movement
153

Appendix | 159
Selected Bibliography | 161
Notes | 170
Index | 215
About the Author | 219
 introduc tion

The Cultural Duality

of Mother’s Day

M
other’s Day celebrated its centennial in May 2008. A century before, on
May 10, 1908, four hundred members of the Andrews Methodist Episco-
pal Church, in Grafton, West Virginia, and a crowd of fifteen thousand
people at the Wanamaker Store Auditorium in Philadelphia attended
the first official observance of Mother’s Day in the United States. The
following year, forty-two additional states joined West Virginia and
Pennsylvania in commemorating the day. The speed and extent of the observance’s
popularity gratified its founder, Anna Jarvis. It was obvious to her that the country’s
sons and daughters craved such a day of maternal tribute as she recounted how
“thousands and thousands of persons in all walks of life, with the mother-hunger in
their hearts, found Mother’s Day a blessing, a comfort and an uplift.”1 She decided
to devote her life to the day’s perpetuation, and after six years of urging, Congress
finally designated Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1914. The Mother’s Day Flag
Resolution empowered President Woodrow Wilson to issue a formal proclamation
calling on the American people to honor U.S. mothers by displaying the American
flag on all government buildings and private homes on the second Sunday in May.

The fact that almost every state in the country, including the territories of
Hawaii and Puerto Rico, hosted a Mother’s Day observance by 1909 stands
as a testament to Jarvis’s dedication and successful leadership of her holi-
day movement. Her Mother’s Day promotions quickly expanded beyond the
United States as well, reaching grateful sons and daughters in Canada, Mex-
ico, South America, Australia, Africa, China, and Japan by 1911. Two years
before President Wilson formally proclaimed the day an official American
holiday, Jarvis had already translated her Mother’s Day literature into over
ten different languages. She insisted, “The marvelous growth of Mother’s
Day in a few years to a national and international day can be attributed to the
‘heart’ or ‘living’ interest it possess for almost every home and every person
of a mother-loving heart in this and other countries.”2

1
 introduction

Today, Mother’s Day remains a widely observed American holiday. Over 80

percent of Americans celebrated the day in its centennial year. Most buy gifts as
opposed to displaying the American flag in maternal tribute, of course. This has
made Mother’s Day a multibillion-dollar industry for retailers and the second-
highest gift-giving day behind Christmas. 3 Yet neither Anna Jarvis’s lifelong
dedication to the day’s observance nor its enormous commercial appeal can com-
pletely explain the holiday’s longevity. Historically, Mother’s Day has generated a
century-long public discourse on American motherhood. To observe Mother’s Day
is to join the larger debate over the cultural expectations of motherhood, as the day
would be meaningless without a model of motherhood to serve as a measurement of
praise. Every celebration must have at its core an image of a mother deemed worthy
of memorializing. The praising of your mother as a good mother on Mother’s Day,
in other words, depends on your understanding of what constitutes good mothering
and whether or not your mother meets the established criteria. Consequently, the
holiday has always provided a platform for a cultural debate over the intrinsic value
of motherhood and the appropriate boundaries of the maternal role.
Since the nineteenth century, various social, commercial, and political movements
have advocated the celebration of Mother’s Day in order to define and harness the sym-
bolic power of motherhood in American society, thereby revealing the observance’s
powerful duality as both a holiday and a cultural representation of motherhood.
Through a historical analysis of the founding and celebrating of Mother’s Day in the
early twentieth century, this book uncovers the cultural significance of the day’s dual-
ity and, in the process, draws a stronger connection between the developing scholar-
ship on the history of holidays and the history of motherhood in American society. A
wide range of disciplines influence the scholarship on holidays and on motherhood,
thus leading to the further integration of the two fields. Both holidays and motherhood,
for example, are studied as cultural institutions, consisting of their own constantly
changing expectations and patterns of behavior, traditions, and rituals; thus, they are
both a product of, and an influence on, American culture. 4 “Holidays, like other cul-
tural products tend to offer a somewhat refractory reading of society,” asserts Amitai
Etzioni. “They advance our understanding of a set of specific social phenomenon and
they cast light on the community or society in which they are celebrated.”5 Maternal
scholarship describes a similar refractory reading offered by the social construction
of motherhood. “There have always been mothers but motherhood was invented,”
explains Ann Dally. “Each subsequent age and society has defined it in its own terms
and imposed its own restrictions and expectations on mothers. Thus motherhood has
not always seemed or been the same.”6
Both Etzioni and Dally stress the changing nature of holiday observances and
maternal expectations as a key opportunity for further study. According to Etzioni,
the editing and reengineering of holidays and their rituals “takes place constantly,
drawing on both new and old patterns. How effective this is, and can be, is a major
subject for social scientists, as it currently remains largely unstudied.” For Dally,
to understand the trends and traditions that define the modern institution of

2
 the cultur a l dua lit y of mother’s day

motherhood, we must first uncover the history: “Old trends need to be followed back.
New trends can be traced back into the past and often then acquire new meaning
and depth. The future emerges from the past and thus helps us understand and come
to terms with the present.”7 By emphasizing Mother’s Day’s duality, this book illus-
trates the enmeshed and interdependent ideological trends, traditions, patterns, and
even misunderstandings embodied within the day’s historic observance, revealing
the holiday’s cultural significance as a symbolic celebration of motherhood.
Within the literature on holidays, Mother’s Day typically falls into one of three
mutually inclusive categories: the sentimental holiday, the invented tradition,
and the recommitment holiday. Sentimental holidays are defined as such for their
celebration of the private family rather than the community. 8 They were primar-
ily a product of the nineteenth century, a gift from white middle-class Victorians
uncomfortable with the carnivalesque celebrations of annual holidays. They pre-
ferred to observe the traditionally public fêtes as child-centered domestic occasions
more reflective of their ideals of “domestic warmth, intimacy, romantic love, special
affection for children and grandparents, and a familial and feminized view of reli-
gion,” according to historian Elizabeth Pleck.9 It was the Victorians, after all, who
domesticated Christmas. They successfully replaced a holiday celebrated during the
colonial period through public drunkenness, overeating, masquerading, and overall
unruly merriment to one of private reverence, with a Christmas tree in the parlor
surrounded by presents and eager children awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.10
Mother’s Day falls easily within this sentimental classification. The traditions sur-
rounding the holiday’s observance are meant to celebrate the home just as much as
they are designed to honor the mothers within it.
But because Mother’s Day carried those Victorian ideals into the modern twen-
tieth century, it can also be described as an invented tradition created to maintain a
perceived continuity with the past during times of rapid social change.11 Historians
who address the issue of Mother’s Day note the significance of its timing, portray-
ing the holiday’s veneration of motherhood and domesticity as an obvious backlash
against the expanding public roles of women at the turn of the century.12 Along the
same argument, Mother’s Day can also be viewed as a recommitment holiday for
its use of specific narratives and rituals to reinforce a social commitment to shared
beliefs. In this case, it is a holiday used to reaffirm traditional gender roles by glo-
rifying women’s primary commitment to their families as wives and mothers.13
Mother’s Day as a sentimental holiday best describes its intimate celebration
of home and motherhood as designed by Anna Jarvis in 1908 and designated by
Congress in 1914. It also effectively represents the intent behind the day’s spe-
cific spelling that remained essential to Jarvis’s holiday vision. “It is a personal
day—‘possessive singular,’” she continually emphasized. “Mother’s Day is not for
the famous. It is just for tributes and to glorify your humble mother and mine.”14
Mother’s Day retains its predominantly sentimental image today, one that is popu-
larly dismissed as a creation of the floral and greeting card industries as Americans
spend billions of dollars on tributes to their humble mothers each year.

3
 introduction

Twenty-first century Americans are not the first to criticize the holiday’s cul-
tural legitimacy. Mother’s Day attracted its share of skepticism from the very start.
When its sentimentalism failed to completely mask the incongruities between its
message of domestic harmony and the social upheaval brought on by the industrial
and urban expansion of the early twentieth century, many questioned the new
holiday’s relevancy as a tribute to modern motherhood. Mother’s Day was in good
company, however, for even established sentimental holidays such as Thanksgiving
and Christmas lost some of their innocence in the face of changing sensibilities and
growing commercialization. Elizabeth Pleck describes this evolution of twentieth-
century holiday celebrations as postsentimental:

It is best to think of the postsentimental approach to ritual as a third layer,

added on top of the carnivalesque and the sentimental approaches, and as a
stance in a debate, which presumes that others will argue and make visible
the merits of sentimentality. Postsentimentalism is both a way of talking about
ritual and a style of practicing it. Cynical and critical, postsentimentalism
uses sentimentality as a foil. . . . Instead of affirming an ideal of the family,
celebrations in postsentimental times upheld a set of values that can be best
described as individualist, pluralist, therapeutic, and consumerist.15

Pleck places the transitional phase between the sentimental and postsentimen-
tal eras in the first decades of the twentieth century, precisely the period when
Mother’s Day gained national recognition. As a sentimental holiday in an emerg-
ing postsentimental society, then, the value of the Mother’s Day observance has
never gone uncontested.
In 1927, Parents Magazine sponsored an essay contest addressing the holiday’s
cultural relevancy. The magazine offered a monetary prize for the top four let-
ters written on the merits of Mother’s Day as viewed from a mother’s perspective.
Sixty-eight mothers wrote essays in favor of the holiday—maudlin sentiment and all.
“Despite the skepticism which this frank generation may feel about the prescribed
sentimentality of Mother’s Day, I should hate to see the institution abolished,” wrote
first-prize winner Viola Lockhart Warren of Rochester, New York. She saw a sincere
value in the holiday’s lesson for children:

It is to her children that the real advantage of the day accrues. It is a whole-
some curb on their sense of self-importance to experience this one celebra-
tion which has not themselves as its central figure. On Mother’s Day they
must give her happiness and then remain in the background, where they
may make an important discovery—that Mother is a separate entity, capable
of gratification entirely aside from them. The young mother is so closely
identified with the physical existence of her small children, that they come
to think of her in terms of themselves. If Mother’s Day can teach them to
think of her as an individual rather than as a convenience, it will strengthen

4
 the cultur a l dua lit y of mother’s day

her influence for the reasoning age just ahead of them. You see, to a mother,
even Mother’s Day must benefit the children to prove its right to survive! 16

Nellie M. Wilson of Indianapolis, Indiana, echoed Mrs. Warren’s heartfelt endorse-

ment of the observance: “Surely Mother’s Day should be set apart to teach the young-
est to the eldest, that on that day, Mother is first; that is her one day in the whole
year when all should do her reverence.”17
Although outnumbered by those who praised the holiday, forty-eight mothers
wrote of their overall disapproval for the magazine’s essay contest. “Since I have
become the mother of two normal, healthy children, my feeling revolts each year
at the approach of Mother’s Day, with its sentimental accompaniments,” admitted
Mary B. Fenelon of Big Rapids, Michigan. She criticized the holiday’s exaggerated
veneration of mothers. She did not want to be held in awe by her children. She
wanted to be their companion, not the “object of their reverence.”18 Elinor Franklin
Young of New York City agreed that the observance caused more harm than good.
She believed those who had learned as children to appreciate their mothers did not
require the prodding of an official holiday to express that appreciation:

Those who observe Mother’s Day merely because some unknown somebodies
have decreed it necessary are either succumbing to false sentiment or acting
in fear lest non-observance cause pain. And, in this connection, think of the
many mothers who get an extra stab of pain on this day, hoping against hope
for a greeting which does not come.19

Emphasizing the duality of Mother’s Day as a holiday and cultural representation of

motherhood allows us to build on Pleck’s sentimental/postsentimental model. The
1927 magazine contest nicely illustrates how the holiday’s sentimental design did not
universally speak to every woman’s view of herself as a mother. In this example, Mrs.
Fenelon and Mrs. Young were more than postsentimental cynics of a sentimental holi-
day; they were vocal critics of the model of motherhood the holiday was designed to
commemorate. Mother’s Day lacked relevancy to their lives, at least, because its ideal-
ized measure of motherhood did not mirror their own experiences and expectations
in the same way it did for Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Wilson. The women’s conflicting
opinions offer a brief yet provocative glimpse into the rich source of maternal history
hidden within the Mother’s Day narrative. It reminds us that in order to celebrate
Mother’s Day, we must first construct a maternal ideal worth memorializing.

mothers’ day versus mother’s day

Americans were not the first to reserve a special day of tribute for mothers. The
practice dates from antiquity. The ancient Greeks honored Rhea, the mother of
Zeus. The ancient Romans celebrated the mother goddess Cybele with a three-day

5
 introduction

long spring festival, known as the Hilaria, on the Ides of March. The early Chris-
tians designated the fourth Sunday in Lent as “Mothering Sunday,” which may have
been an adaptation of the pagan worship of Cybele, where honoring the Virgin Mary
or the Mother Church replaced the honoring of the mother goddess. During the
sixteenth century, parishioners in England first celebrated Mothering Sunday by
returning to the church of their baptism to pay tribute. By the 1600s, the celebra-
tion broadened to include the practice of apprentices and servants returning home
with small gifts for their mothers. This custom persisted into the early nineteenth
century; sons and daughters returning home to visit their mothers were said to
“go a mothering.”20
The American observance of Mother’s Day began in the nineteenth century.
Although Anna Jarvis considered herself the true founder of Mother’s Day, she was
not the first to promote the idea of a maternal memorial day. Five others earned local
and national notability for their sponsorship of a Mother’s Day celebration before
she launched her movement in 1907: Ann Reeves Jarvis (1858), Julia Ward Howe
(1873), Juliet Calhoun Blakeley (1877), Mary Towles Sasseen (1893), and Frank Hering
(1904). Chapter 1 traces the origins of the first calls for a Mother’s Day and compares
the maternal models that each of these five designed his or her day to commemorate.
Their individual stories reveal how the holiday’s susceptibility to conflicting maternal
imagery began long before Anna Jarvis’s battle to defend her sentimental observance
from its postsentimental detractors. In her discussion of Mother’s Day, for example,
historian Stephanie Coontz recounts the time she received a handmade gift from her
son for Mother’s Day. The school had encouraged students to personally make, not
purchase, a present for their mothers in appreciation of her special love and care as
the holiday had “originally intended.” She was delighted to receive the gift, of course,
but she admitted that the historian in her “was a little bemused”:

The fact is that Mother’s Day originated to celebrate the organized activities
of women outside the home. It became trivialized and commercialized only
after it became confined to “special” nuclear family relations. The people who
first inspired Mother’s Day had quite a different idea about what made moth-
ers special. They believed that motherhood was a political force. They wished
to celebrate mothers’ social roles as community organizers, honoring women
who acted on behalf of the entire future generation rather than simply putting
their own children first. 21

Essentially, the earliest promoters of the maternal holiday envisioned an observance

best exemplified by the possessive plural form Mothers’ Day rather than its posses-
sive singular representation.
In contrast to Mother’s Day’s sentimental celebration of the family and a mother’s
central role within it, Mothers’ Day venerated the full range of women’s roles as moth-
ers and the boundless reach of their maternal influences. As mothers, Reeves Jarvis,
Howe, and Blakeley understood the private and public dynamics of women’s maternal

6
 the cultur a l dua lit y of mother’s day

Figure I.1. Anna Jarvis. Courtesy of the International Mother’s Day Shrine,
Grafton, West Virginia.

identities and seized the opportunity to organize women around their shared maternal
experiences in a way that encouraged social and political activism. Unlike the three
earliest figures, the remaining Mother’s Day promoters, Sasseen and Hering, were
not parents. Their child-centered perspective of motherhood subsequently failed to
recognize the same maternal traits revered by the holiday’s original possessive plural
design. They introduced instead the sentimental celebration of Mother’s Day that
Anna Jarvis later elaborated and popularized throughout the early twentieth century.
Where Reeves Jarvis, Howe, and Blakely offered mothers an active role in their own
tribute, Sasseen and Hering reduced mothers to passive figures of praise.
Chapter 2 formally introduces Anna Jarvis and the work she referred to as her
Mother’s Day movement to establish and protect the sentimental design of her holi-
day observance. The discussion begins with the relationship between Jarvis and her
mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, and the role her mother’s memory played in the promo-
tion of Mother’s Day. Although Jarvis dedicated the day to all mothers in general
appreciation for their familial devotion, she designed the day as a special tribute to
her mother. Yet when she memorialized her mother, she did so strictly as a daugh-
ter—which invariably distorted Ann Reeves Jarvis’s Mothers’ Day model built on
the collective strength women gained from their shared maternal experiences. The

7
 introduction

discussion ends with Jarvis’s battle to defend her Mother’s Day design from political
aggrandizement and commercial exploitation. In 1912, Jarvis formally structured
her movement into a central organization, the Mother’s Day International Associa-
tion, to better coordinate, as well as protect, her work. As part of the incorporation
process, she trademarked all names and emblems used by her association, thereby
defining the observance as her sole intellectual and legal property. 22
Throughout her career, the public assaults Jarvis led against the floral, confection,
and greeting card industries for their holiday profiteering and copyright infringement
were tailor-made for sensational media coverage. In 1922, the New York Times reported
her endorsement of open boycotts against the florists who raised the prices of white
carnations every May. A year later, the paper detailed her crashing of a retail confec-
tioner convention to protest the industry’s economic gouging of her Mother’s Day
sentiment. Her 1925 arrest for disorderly conduct after disrupting an American War
Mothers convention in Philadelphia made the front page of Midwestern newspapers.
Jarvis condemned the organization’s holiday fund-raising drives featuring the sale
of white carnations. The legendary stories continue to fascinate modern observers
and academics. The media coverage of Mother’s Day centennial celebrations focused
more on the embittered founder’s ill-fated crusade against commercialism than any
other aspect of her Mother’s Day movement. Most historical accounts share the same
focus on Jarvis’s life.23 Yet this book reveals the often overlooked complexity of Jarvis’s
relationship with modern commercial forces and, more importantly, clarifies what
both contemporary detractors and modern historians have judged as her irrational
criticisms of the commercialization of Mother’s Day.

infringers, charity charlatans, and

the expectant mother racket

For forty years, Jarvis waged a war against a variety of adversaries to protect her
vision of Mother’s Day and the model of motherhood it memorialized. This resulted
in a lengthy list of people and organizations she classified as “anti-mother propa-
gandists” for their distortion or abuse of Mother’s Day. All rival promoters of the
holiday, according to Jarvis, were primarily motivated by greed—even those who
sought to harness the observance’s popularity toward nobler humanitarian causes.
She considered noncommercial organizations that economically profited from
Mother’s Day, either indirectly through spin-off holidays and welfare campaigns
or directly through fund-raising events, as pirates looting the day’s popularity for
personal gain. Piracy was piracy, irrespective of any altruistic justifications for the
holiday’s appropriation. The “Christian pirates,” in her opinion, were habitually the
worst offenders of all. 24
The second half of the book utilizes Jarvis’s list of “anti-mother propagandists”
to explore how noncommercial or philanthropic Mother’s Day rivals reinterpreted
the holiday to meet specific political, economic, or social welfare agendas. This

8
 the cultur a l dua lit y of mother’s day

consists of more than just the aesthetic differences commonly depicted within the
existing literature; it includes original historical analyses of the divergent models
of motherhood expressed through the imagery and rhetoric of the alternative cel-
ebrations. Ironically, the lesser-known rivals of Jarvis and her movement shared
her condemnation of commercialization and her desire to redeem the holiday’s
tainted reputation. That redemption, however, required the rejection of Mother’s
Day’s sentimental design as culturally irrelevant. For organizations wishing to
educate parents on the new child-rearing techniques or for charities struggling to
aid impoverished mothers and children, the sentimentality of Jarvis’s Mother’s Day
held little value. 25 Subsequently, they sought to style the holiday to better represent
their postsentimental criticisms and modern concerns.
Since the discussion is limited to only the groups who came in direct conflict with
Jarvis, it is not an exhaustive study of Mother’s Day’s postsentimental representa-
tions, but one that builds on Jarvis’s continued role in the day’s contested history. Her
well-documented condemnations and publicized confrontations with anti-mother
propagandists provide an indispensable sounding board on which to explore and
critique the holiday’s multiple maternal meanings. Her personal and public critiques
add both drama and theoretical depth to the larger narrative, because they were
as outrageous and entertaining as they were clever and poignant. Throughout the
history of her Mother’s Day movement, Jarvis served as the requisite sentimental
foil to the postsentimental celebrations of motherhood, since the only hypocrisies
she failed to expose were her own.
Chapter 3 explores how the early twentieth-century emphasis on the domestic role
of fathers encroached on the holiday’s glorification of a mother’s unrivaled influence
over her children. An increased interest in the importance of fathers and children
within the modern family challenged the domestic imagery of husbands and children
beholden to the care only a mother could provide. Fathers and children became autono-
mous family members who served different and significant roles requiring special-
ized attention and praise. The call for fathers to play a larger domestic role naturally
accompanied a call for a larger share of the recognition, including appropriate holiday
tributes. Sentimental holidays venerating the values of domesticity, however, tradition-
ally placed fathers on the periphery. Father was the parent honored for his economic
contributions, the one who provided the means to pay for holiday feasts and gifts; it was
Mother who received direct validation for her pivotal role in the celebration’s success,
whether through the preparation of the perfect Thanksgiving meal or the time spent
selecting just the right Christmas gifts.26 In a 1929 editorial, George Hecht, editor of
Parents Magazine, pondered the apparent holiday marginalization of fathers and asked
the provocative question of “Why not a Parents’ Day?”:

The father’s contribution to the family life has too often been considered
merely a financial one. But with a better understanding of the importance of
family relationships has come the realization that the father exerts a strong
influence on the lives of his children. Parents’ Day would foster in children

9
 introduction

a proper recognition and appreciation of the unselfish devotion and self-

sacrificing of both mothers and fathers. 27

The editorial was Hecht’s endorsement of the ongoing campaign led by a New York
City radio personality to replace Mother’s Day with a more generic Parents’ Day.
Other promoters, in contrast, did not wish to combine the commemoration of father-
hood with motherhood and strove instead to establish a separate Father’s Day on
the heels of the first Mother’s Day observance.
Jarvis viewed the Father’s Day and Parents’ Day celebrations as, on the whole,
blatant schemes concocted by infringers to circumvent her legal copyright for com-
mercial gain. And her assessment was not completely wrong. On a deeper level,
however, she recognized the power of the rival celebrations to diminish both the
significance of the Mother’s Day observance and its traditional veneration of moth-
erhood. Since the national calendar was already full of days honoring American
fathers, such as the annual commemoration of George Washington as the coun-
try’s greatest “Founding Father,” she did not see the need to further overshadow
the nation’s only feminine tribute with yet another memorial father’s day. 28 She
expressed even less tolerance for the Parents’ Day observance:

When a son or daughter cannot endure the name “mother” for a single day
of the year it would seem there is something wrong. One day out of all the
ages, and one day out of all the year to bear the name “mother” is surely not
too much for her. 29

As with her commercial adversaries, Jarvis fought rival holiday promoters and
campaigns on multiple personal, legal, and ideological levels.
Chapters 4 and 5 examine how the American War Mothers, the American
Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation, and the Maternity Center
Association used Mother’s Day in their educational, promotional, and fund-raising
efforts and, by during so, altered the meaning of its celebration. Through indepen-
dent holiday campaigns, the organizations dramatically transformed motherhood
from a private issue into one demanding public attention by portraying mothers as
the entitled recipients of the country’s respect, concern, and generosity. Moreover,
they provided a larger opportunity for maternal activism in their social relief and
welfare movements. Even when the organizations failed to completely escape the
trappings of the holiday’s sentimental rhetoric—after all, tragic stories of suffer-
ing mothers effectively tugs on the proverbial heart and purse strings of potential
supporters—their Mother’s Day campaigns promoted a richer model of American
motherhood, one inclusive of both maternal vulnerability and empowerment, and
one deserving of domestic praise and public deference. In an odd twist of fate, the
same organizations that Jarvis derisively referenced as “charity charlatans” and the
“expectant mother racket” were modern representations of her mother’s original
Mothers’ Day vision.

10
 the cultur a l dua lit y of mother’s day

Jarvis denounced their charitable abuse of Mother’s Day as a callous intrusion on

the sanctity of the home and the absolute praise of motherhood. What the American
War Mothers, the American Mothers Committee, and the Maternity Center Asso-
ciation considered a maternal tribute smacked only of pity to Jarvis, who designed
Mother’s Day to honor the supremacy of a mother’s domestic influence and not exploit
her weaknesses for public sympathy. Her accusations of ingratitude and charges of
exploitation, regardless of her personal agenda, reveal the underlying conflict between
the sentimental and postsentimental portrayal of the maternal role. Jarvis’s veneration
of motherhood clearly clashed with the modern organizations’ persistent depictions of
mothers in need, whether it be in need of housing, medical care, or maternal training.
Her Mother’s Day celebration, in comparison, never questioned a mother’s intrinsic
worth or natural ability to care for her children. If a mother was victimized at all, it
was only by her children’s failure to pay tribute to her indispensable role in their lives.
“There is ONE DAY in the year we do not talk of POOR MOTHERS and ask charity for
them,” affirmed Jarvis. “Your Mother can never be poor with your love.”30 Even the
poorest mother was entitled to unconditional commemoration on Mother’s Day; she
did not deserve to be pitied for her apparent misfortunes, reminded of her maternal
failures, or made a public source of social policy debates.
The historical narrative concludes with the decline of Jarvis’s Mother’s Day
movement in the 1940s. Four decades as the self-proclaimed defender of Mother’s

Figure I.2. Grafton Historical Marker. Courtesy of the West Virginia and
Regional History Collection, West Virginia University.

11
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TEXT-BOOK OF INDIAN HISTORY; WITH GEOGRAPHICAL

NOTES, GENEALOGICAL TABLES, EXAMINATION QUESTIONS, ANI>
CHRONOLOGICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, AND GENERAL
INDEXES, FOR THE SEsse of
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PRINTED RY RAI.I.ANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH

AND LONDON
 PREFACE. This book is strictly a manual for students, and
everything has been sacrificed to the one object of making it
thoroughly useful in this way. The author has long been engaged in
educational pursuits in India, and has had considerable experience
of the requirements of the Indian Universities ; and he has aimed
chiefly at producing such a manual as might be sufficient for those
who are preparing for these University Examinations. Even for
others, however, it may be found useful, as containing a carefully
digested epitome of the subject. The difficulty of bringing so wide a
subject within" convenient limits has been very great ; hence the
author has felt it necessary, in general, to omit anecdotes and details
of sieges and battles, and to say what be had to say in the fewest
possible words. It is to be hoped that those who use this text-book
will be induced to read for themselves the very excellent works in
which almost everything connected with Indian history is to be
found. The chief of these are indicated below. Tbe writer bas made
use of them freely ; while he has tried to go to the very sources of
information where he could do so, he advances no claim to
originality. The literature
 IV PREFACE. i . connected with the history of British India is
exceedingly copious and valuable. Among the sources of British
Indian history must be mentioned the following : — (1.) The various
" Records of Government," issued regularly by the Supreme and
Local Governments in India. Those published by the Bombay
Government are singularly useful. The reports of the Panjab
Administration are invaluable. (2.) The " Collection of Treaties,
Engagements, and Sunnuds relating to India and Neighbouring
Countries," compiled by Mr C. U. Aitchison, with introductory
remarks, is a most useful work. (:3.) The files of the Friend of India
— the famous Serampore newspaper for the last twenty years —
afford the completest and most trustworthy data, not only for
current events, but for almost every portion of Indian history. They
abound in able monographs. (4.) The volumes of the Calcutta
Review, though unequal in merit, and uncertain in tone, are
nevertheless a mine of information. Some of the most eminent men
in India have been among the contributors to that valuable work.
(5.) Twelve volumes of " Annals of Indian Administration " have been
published at Serampore by Dr Smith. These are of much practical
utility.
 PREFACE. V (6.) The following are standard works, to which
the writer acknowledges his great obligation. They should be read by
every one who wishes to understand Indian history : — 1. Wheeler's
History of India, . . . . ) In connection with 2. Mrs Spier's Life in
Antient India, . . j ch. i. of this text-book. Republished as Mrs
Manning's Antient and Mediaeval India : a most useful book. 3.
Elphinstone's History of India : Edited by Mr Cowell, ... ... 4. Brigg's
Muhammedan Power in India (Fe- I Ch. ii. rishta), ...... 5. Keene's
Mogul Empire, 6. Grant Duff's History of the Mahrattas, 7. Murray's
History of British India, 8. Thornton's British Empire in India, 9.
Auber's Rise of British Power in India, 10. Malleson's French in India,
. 11. Orme's Hindustan, . . . . 12. Cunningham's History of the Sikhs,
13. Wilks' Mysore, Ch. v. Ch. vi. Ch. vii., viii., ix., x. Ch. xi. Ch. xii. (7.)
The books mentioned under are also of great value : — 1. Malcolm's
Central India. 2. Tod's ltajastan. 3. Kaye's Life of Metcalfe. 4.
Metcalfe's Despatches. 5. Malcolm's Life of Clive. 6. Gleig's Life of
Hastings. 7. Kaye's Life of Malcolm. 8. Martineau's British Rule in
India. 9. Hamilton's Gazetteer. The list might be greatly extended ;
but these are books which every real student should possess. They
will introduce the reader to others.
The text on this page is estimated to be only 29.56%
accurate

VI PREFACE. No pains have been spared to make the

indexes, tables, &c., complete. The author will be thankful to receive
any hints from those who use this manual, in order that in a future
edition it may be more thoroughly adapted to its purpose.
OOTACAMUND, SOUTH INDIA, October 5, 1869. ERRATA. Page 45,
line 14, for Panchaba, read PancMla. „ 54, „ 17, for Shah harueh,
read Shah Nameh. „ 87, „ 11, for Bababhipor, read Balabhipor. „ 122,
„ 30, for Marquis de Confleurs, read Marquis
 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. I. POLITICAL DIVISIONS 0"
INDIA, ...... 1 II. SKETCH OF THE GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OP INDIA,
... 19 III. ARRANGEMENT OP THE SUBJECT, ..... 30 CHAPTER I.
ANTIENT INDIA, ........ 33 CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OP THE
VARIOUS APGAN DYNASTIES, . ... 46 CHAPTER III. THE MO(N)GUL
(MOGUL) EMPERORS OP INDIA, . . .75 CHAPTER IV. A SUMMARY OF
THE HISTORY OP THE DAKHAN, . . . . 131 CHAPTER V. THE
HISTORY OF THE MAHRATTAS, FROM THE BIRTH OF SIVAJI, . . 146
CHAPTER VI. THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA, ....... 227
 viii CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER VII. THE HISTORY OF THE
EUROPEAN COMPANIES, 241 CHAPTER VIII. THE RIVALRIES AND
WARS OF THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH, 257 CHAPTER IX. THE
FOUNDATION OF BRITISH POWER IN BENGAL, 278 CHAPTER X.
THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF BRITISH INDIA, 299 CHAPTER XI.
THE PANJAB, ....... 384 CHAPTER XII. THE HISTORY OF MYSORE,
...... 405 CONCLUSION, ....... 432 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS ON
INDIAN HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY, 439 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES
OF INDIAN HISTORY, 457 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX, . . . . . 469
GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX, ...... 493 GENERAL INDEX, ....... 521 LIST
OF MAPS, ....... 527
 INTRODUCTION. I. POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF INDIA. § 1.
Our subject is India, and especially British India. Under this name is
included tbe immense tract from Peshawar, and the Suleiman and
Hala mountains, on the N.W., to the banks of the Salwin and the
island of Singapore in the S.E. ; and from the Himalayan chain on
the N., to Cape Comorin, or (including Ceylon) to Dondra Head in
the South. This is a vast and varied field. § 2. The accompanying
sketch-map should be carefully studied and copied. It will be well to
observe the following particulars : — (1.) The latitude of Singapore,
1° 15' N., nearly on the equator. Longitude, 104° E. (2.) The latitude
of Peshawar, the -British frontier Cantonment on the N.W., 33° 57' N.
Longitude, 71° 40' E. (3.) The latitude of Dondra Head, the South
Cape of Ceylon, 5° 56' N. Longitude, 80° 30' E. (4.) The latitude of
Cape Comorin, the South Cape of the Peninsula of India, 8° 4' N.
Longitude, 77° 30' E. INTRO. § 1, J. Boundaries. Singapore.
Peshawar. Dondra nead. Cape Comorin.
 INTRO. § 3-S. Extent of India. Population. Grand Divisions
of India. INTRODUCTION. Political Divisions of British India. The
Bengal Presidency. The Supreme Government. The Home
Government. The Bengal Presidency. Bengal. § 3. India extends
about 1900 miles from north to south, and 1500 miles from east to
west, and contains 1,500,000 square miles. § 4. Its population is
about 187 millions. It varies from 600 to a square mile in Bengal, to
10 in some of the hill districts. § 5. In this vast territory we must
distinguish : I. The British dominions strictly so called ; II. Provinces
under British protection ; and more or less dependent upon Britain ;
III. Independent States, in alliance with Great Britain, and
acknowledging her as the paramount power ; IV. A few small spots
belonging to other European powers. § 6. The British dominions in
India are divided into Presidencies, Vice-presidencies, and provinces
under Commissioners. There are three Presidencies. § 7. (I.) The
Bengal Presidency. (See map.) Of this Calcutta is the capital, and
here the Viceroy and Governor-General resides. His authority is
supreme over all India. The Govern or- General's legislative council
makes laws for all India in general, and for all but Madras, Bombay,
and Bengal in detail. Every act of the subordinate councils must be
confirmed by the Governor-General. The Secretary of State for India
can advise Her Majesty to veto any act of the Governor-General's
Council. The Secretary of State for India, with his council of fifteen
members, is thus supreme. § 8. In this Presidency, (1.) Bengal itself
has been under a Lieutenant-Governor
 POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF BRITISH INDIA. 3 INTRO, i 8.
Sub-Divisions of Bengal. since 1853. His controul extends over Bahar
and Bengdl proper, Orissa and Assam. The number of divisions here
is eleven, and of districts fifty- six. The following is the table of the
sub-divisions of the Bengal territory. (See map.) Divisions. Districts.
Divisions. Districts. r L ! Bhagulpur < (Boglipur). n. BuhdwAn. r in. i
Chittagong. | IV. f Cdttack \ (Ch. v. § 56). 1 • 1 Dacca. VI. Nuddea. 1
Bhagulpur. 2 Monghyr. 3 Ptirneah. 4 Sonthal Pergunnahs. 5
Bancoora. 6 Beerbhum. 7 Burdwan. 8 Hugli. 9 Howrah. 10 Midnapdr.
11 Noakhally. 12 Chittagong. 13 Tipperah. 14 The Chittagong Hill
Tracts. 15 Balasore. 16 Cuttack. 17 P
 INTRO. § 8, 9. Population. Sikhim. Cossyah and Jyutia.
Munnipflr. Cooch Bahar. Tipperah. North-Western Provinces. Extent.
Districts. (Ch. x. § 74.) Uill States. INTRODUCTION. The North-
Western Provinces. The total population of this province is nearly
40,000,000. It is considerably larger than France. Sikhim is
independent. Darjeeling (a favourite sanitarium) was purchased in
1835. On the south-west frontier are twenty-one Mehals, or small
districts, and the Cuttack tributary Mehals number eighteen. These
mostly came under England in 1803. Connected with Assam are the
Cossyah and Jyntia hill territories, in which are many semi-
independent chiefs ; and the Garrow country, with which we have
little intercourse. The state of Munnipur pays no tribute. Cooch
Bahar, in 1772, became tributary, paying half its revenues to the
British, in return for the expulsion of the Butias. Here is independent
Tipperah, which was never subjected by the Moguls, and is perfectly
independent. § 9. (2.) The North-Western Provinces are also under a
Lieutenant-Governor (since 1835) : its capital is Allahabad. This
territory extends, as seen in the map, along the banks of the Jamna
and Ganges, including Alldhdbdd, Agra, Delhi, and Ben&res, the
heart of the antient Hindustan. Delhi has now been put under the
Panjab Government. It contains thirty-six districts, under seven
Commissioners. Here are the Rajas of Gurhwal and Shahpura. There
are also here nineteen Hill States, to whose rulers the right of
adoption has been conceded. (§ 24.) The following is the table of
the sub-divisions of the North- Western Provinces : —
 POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF BRITISH INDIA. The Panjab.
INTRO. § 9, 10. Divisions. Districts. Divisions. Districts. , 1 Mirut.* r
19 Allahabad.* 2 Allghar. 20 KMnpto.* I. 3 Seharunpur. IV. 21
Futtehpur. MlRUT. 4 Muzaffir Nagar. Allahabad. 22 Banda. 1 5
Boolundshuhur. 23 Hummeerpur. 6 DSraDun. .. 24 Jounpftr. ( 7
Bareilly* r 25 Benares.* 8 Bijnur. 26 Gorruckpux.* II. 9 Moradabad.*
V. 27 Busti. ROHILKHAND. 10 Budaon. Benares. 28 Azimghar. 11
Shahjebanpur.* 29 Mirz&pur.* 1 12 Terai. . 30 Ghazipur. ' 13 Agra.*
vi r 31 Jhausi. , 14 Muttra* 32 Jaloun. III. (Mat'hura). 33 Lullutpflr.
Agra. 15 Furruckabad.* VII. f 34 Kumadn. 16 Mynptiri. Kuma6n. 35
Gurhwal. 17 Etawah. 36 Ajmir(Rajptitdna). 18 Etah. Tbe places
marked * are the great cities. The population of this great territory is
about 30,000,000. It is nearly equal in area to Great Britain. § 10.
(3.) The Pan jab is under a Lieutenant-Governor, and is divided into
thirty-two districts, under ten Commissioners. (Comp. ch. xi. § 46.)
There are six Cis-Satlaj States, to whose rulers the right of adoption
has been given. (§ 24.) Cashmir and the Trans-Satlaj States may be
here mentioned. The treaty of Umritsir, 16th March 1846, put Golab
Sing in possession of Cashmir (ch. xi. § 34), between the Indus and
the Ravi. The Maharaja died in 1857, and his Population. The Panjab.
Cashmir.
 INTRO. § 10, 11. Sikh protected States. Dli&walpfir. (Comp.
ch. xi. §1, Ac.) Divisions. I. Delhi. II. HlSSAR. III. Umbala. IV.
JULLINDHUR. Y. Umritsib. VI. Lah6r. INTRODUCTION. The Panjab.
Oudh. son, Rumbir Sing, succeeded. The right of adoption has been
granted to him. There are also the Rajas of Kapurthala, Mandi,
Chamha, and Svkltet, and the Sirdars Shamshir Sing Sindhanwala,
and Tej Sing, who are included in the list in § 24. The Khftn of
Bhawalpur is protected by the terms of a treaty made in 1838. He
receives a pension for his services in 1849. (Ch. xi. § 35.) The
following is a list of the sub-divisions of the Panjab territory :—
Districts. Delhi. Gurgaon. Kurnal. Hissar. Rohlak. Sirsa. Umbala.
Ladiana. Simla. Jullindhur. HushiarpUr. Kangra. Urnritsir. Sealkot.
Gurdaspfir. Lah6r. Ferozpftr. Gujranwala. Divisions. VII. Rawal Pindi.
VIII. MULTAN. IX. Derajat. X. Peshawar. Districts. 19 Rawalpindi. 20
Jhilam. 21 Gujamt. 22 Shahpftr. 23 Maltan. 24 Jhuug. 25
Montgomery. 26 Muzaffirghar. 27 Dera Ismael Khan. 28 Dora Ghazi
Khan. 29 Bannu. 30 Pesh;\war. 31 Kohftt. 32 Hazara. Oudh. The
population of this territory is nearly 15,000,000. It is about the size
of Italy. § 11. (4.) Oudh is entrusted to a Chief Commissioner, under
whom are four Commissioners, with twelve districts. (See map.)
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