History of Mother's Day by Donna Schlachter

Photo by Simon Berger from Pexels

Mother’s Day, although past for this year, has a long and varied history. Attributed to the ancient Greeks and Romans, the celebration of their mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele is believed to be the first references to setting aside a specific day to remember and honor the contributions of not only goddesses but also of the women in our lives.

Photo by Javier Cruz from Pexels

Early Christians, wanting to reach these pagan cultures, initiated their own festival called “Mothering Sunday”, designed to draw believers and seekers alike into local churches or ‘mother church’, and was held on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

Photo by Sharefaith from Pexels

As with most religious celebrations, eventually secularism took hold. In the 1860s, Ann Reeves Jarvis started “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs”, where women were taught the skills needed to maintain their households, including cooking, cleaning, sewing, needlework, child-rearing, and so more. Following the Civil War, the group changed its name to “Mothers Friendship Day”, where women from both sides of the conflict were encouraged to befriend each other in hopes of aiding the country to reunite.


By 1870, Julia Ward Howe, with an eye on world peace, instituted her Mothers Day Proclamation and set June 2nd as the date for the celebration of the work of the women in her group.

Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels

In 1905, Ann Jarvis died, and her daughter, Anna Jarvis, who never married, worked tirelessly to set aside a day each year to honor the sacrifices made by women for their children and their families. By 1908, the day was being celebrated in many towns and states, often with the support of a local department store. In 1912, the government officially set aside the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day.

However, by 1920, Ann Jarvis was disgruntled at the commercialization of the holiday, and spent the rest of her life (she died in 1948) trying to undo all her hard work.

Photo by Giftpundits.com from Pexels

Today we celebrate Mother’s Day with cards, flowers, gifts, and oftentimes a day off from cooking and other household chores.


Celebrating Around the World

In Thailand, the day is celebrated on the birthday of the current queen, which currently is in August.

In Ethiopia, a multi-day celebration is held in early Fall.



No matter its source or how you celebrate, mothers are certainly important. None of us would be here without a mother. And regardless of the number of children borne, mothers are molders, those tireless individuals who fashion us into the productive adults we all strive to become. As women, we all have an important job to do—setting the example for the next generation, and teaching other women how to fulfill their God-given calling to impact and change lives.



Resources:

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mothers-day

https://www.shutterfly.com/ideas/mothers-day-bible-verses/

Donna lives in Denver with husband Patrick. As a hybrid author, she writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, devotional books, and books on the writing craft.





 

 

 

 

 

www.HiStoryThruTheAges.com Stay connected so you learn about new releases, preorders, and presales, as well as check out featured authors, book reviews, and a little corner of peace. Plus: Receive a free ebook simply for signing up!

www.HiStoryThruTheAges.wordpress.com

Facebook: www.Facebook.com/DonnaschlachterAuthor

Twitter: www.Twitter.com/DonnaSchlachter

Books: Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ci5Xqq and Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2gZATjm

Etsy online shop of original artwork, book folding art, and gift items: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Dare2DreamUS

When Theodore Roosevelt Was Shot--and a Giveaway

Perhaps we don’t hear about the assassination attempt on Theodore Roosevelt as much as we do some others, because he wasn’t actually president when it occurred.

Roosevelt in 1904

Theodore Roosevelt was known as a robust and active man. He refused to let his health hold him back. As a child, he was somewhat weak, and his father told him to “make his body.” For the rest of his life he insisted in engaging in strenuous exercise. People who worked with him had trouble keeping up with him.

On October 14, 1912 he made his way to the Milwaukee Auditorium to give a speech. He got into an open-air car outside the Gilpatrick Hotel and was waving his hat to the crowd when a man fired at him from only a few feet away with a Colt revolver.

Roosevelt was campaigning for a third term as President. He had served from 1901 to 1909, and sat out the next four years. In the 1912 campaign, he lost the Republican nomination to incumbent president William Howard Taft, and so decided to run as a Progressive Party candidate. Heading out to make his speech, he had folded the fifty or so pages of his planned address in half and stuck into the inner pocket of his heavy coat. That speech, along with a case holding his eyeglasses, may have saved his life.

John Schrank

The shooter, John Schrank, 36, was an unemployed saloonkeeper. He said later that “any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.” 

But he also seemed to think he’d seen the ghost of William McKinley, whose assassination in 1901 catapulted Roosevelt to the presidency. Schrank felt he was following McKinley’s wishes in stalking Roosevelt for weeks and trying to kill him. According to Schrank, McKinley told him in a dream that Roosevelt was his murderer and to avenge his death. The man spent the rest of his life in a Wisconsin asylum.

Schrank's letter "to the people of the United States" describing his alleged dream of McKinley.

Roosevelt could tell the wound was minor and insisted on going ahead with his speech, in spite of what the doctor traveling with him advised. He declared, “He pinked me,” a fencing term which meant the wound was not serious but drew blood. Roosevelt avidly studied and practiced fencing and single stick fighting.

He went to the auditorium to deliver his address. He declared to the crowd, "I have just been shot…Fortunately, I had my manuscript. . .and there is where the bullet went through.” He displayed the two holes through each page of his folded speech. 

His party had been nicknamed the Bull Moose Party, for Roosevelt’s energy and determination. He told the crowd as he displayed the blood-stained manuscript, “You see, it takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose.” He spoke for more than an hour. Only at its conclusion did he let his attendants get him to a hospital.

X-rays showed that the bullet lodged against his fourth right rib. If the items in his pockets hadn’t deflected it, probably it would have struck his heart. The doctors decided it was safest to leave the bullet where it was, rather than to operate, and he carried it for the rest of his life.

Even though the assassination attempt brought Roosevelt a lot of sympathy, he lost the election, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson took office.

Giveaway: Leave a comment with your contact information to enter a drawing for a copy of my book River Rest, set in 1918 Maine.

Susan Page Davis is the author of more than sixty published novels. She’s always interested in the unusual happenings of the past. Her newest books include Echo Canyon, Seven Brides for Seven Texans, The Saboteur, River Rest, and Tearoom for Two. She’s a two-time winner of the Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award and the Will Rogers Medallion, and also a winner of the Carol Award and a finalist in the WILLA Literary Awards and the More Than Magic Contest. Visit her website at: www.susanpagedavis.com .

The Pig on the Titanic

Edith Rosenbaum Russell

By Marilyn Turk

When Edith Rosenbaum Russell boarded the RMS Titanic on April 10, 1912, the fashion journalist brought with her nineteen trunks of clothes, the latest in French fashion. She also brought her pig.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of Edith and her pig. First, I need to tell you about Edith. A trailblazer among women, Edith lived in France as a correspondent to Women’s Wear Daily.  In 1911, Edith and her fiance were on the way to a horse race when the car crashed into a tree, killing her fiancé.

Upon hearing the news, her mother Sophia rushed from the United States to comfort her daughter. Learning that pigs were a symbol of good luck in France, she bought a black and white fur-covered musical papier-mache pig with a windup tail to take to her grieving daughter. Edith promised her mother she’d always carry the pig with her for luck. Apparently, Sophia thought Edith needed extra good luck, as she’d already had other close calls – escaping a train wreck and a fire.

Edith's Pig

Edith hadn’t planned to be on the Titanic that day, but her trip to New York was delayed so she could cover an Easter fashion show in Paris. She applied for insurance to cover all her belongings, but was turned down because the Titanic was considered unsinkable. Still, Edith had a premonition and concern about the trip, which she wrote to her secretary from her stateroom onboard.

Late the night of April 14, Edith had just returned to her first-class cabin when she felt a jolt. The floor of her room slanted and the ship came to a stop. From the porthole in her cabin, she could see an iceberg. She put on her fur coat and went outside to ask if there was a problem. She was assured by officers everything was fine, so she returned to her room.

Titanic

Not long afterwards, someone knocked on her door and told her passengers needed to wear their life vests. Edith left the room to wait in the lounge with other passengers, but when she ran into her room steward, she asked if there was any danger. Unable to hide his unease, he told her passengers would be loaded into lifeboats. She asked him to go back to her room and retrieve her pig, which he returned to her wrapped in a blanket.

Edith and her pig

As Edith hesitated from climbing into the hanging lifeboat, one of the sailors took her bundle and said, “Well at least we will save your baby,” and tossed it into the boat. That was all it took to get Edith to jump, landing in Lifeboat Number 11. As her boat floated away from the sinking ship, Edith comforted the crying children around her by playing her musical pig.

Edith was one of 700 people to survive the sinking that claimed 1500 lives. She passed away at the age of 95 in 1975. And her pig? It still survives as a resident of the National Maritime Museum in England.

A multi-published author, Marilyn Turk writes historical fiction about and lives in the coastal South. Her most recent novel, A Gilded Curse, released in March 2016 from Heritage Beacon Fiction, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolina. Her fascination for lighthouses spawned her popular weekly lighthouse blog @ http://pathwayheart.com, and inspired her book, Lighthouse Devotions – 52 Inspiring Lighthouse Stories.