CONWAY, S.C. — Mother’s Day 2026 lands on Sunday, May 10th, the same calendar date as the very first observance in 1908. Americans are expected to spend a record **$38 billion** marking the holiday this year, with per-person spending averaging **$284.25** [NRF, 2026]. Along the Grand Strand, the weekend doubles as a tourism showcase, with Brookgreen Gardens and the PGA TOUR drawing visitors alongside brunch crowds.

Mother’s Day Horry County: Weekend Activities and Celebrations

– Sunday, May 10 — Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May

– Brookgreen Gardens 5th Annual Spring Wine Festival — Sunday, May 10

– OneFlight Myrtle Beach Classic, PGA TOUR final round — the Dunes Golf and Beach Club

– 75 percent of U.S. shoppers plan to buy flowers; jewelry leads spending at a projected $6.8 billion [NRF, 2026]

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### Introduction

The holiday Horry County families will mark this Sunday is, by the calendar of American observances, still young. It began with a daughter’s grief in a small Methodist church in **Grafton, West Virginia**, onMay 10, 1908, when **Anna Maria Jarvis** delivered five hundred white carnations to honor her late mother [International Mother’s Day Shrine, 2026].

Within six years, that private memorial had become a national holiday, signed into proclamation by **President Woodrow Wilson** on **May 9, 1914** [The American Presidency Project, 1914]. For the churches and small towns of Horry County — long settled by the time Wilson put his pen to the paper — the holiday arrived as something familiar in form, if new in name.

### A Holiday Born in Mourning

Anna Jarvis was not building a national institution. She was keeping a vow. **Ann Reeves Jarvis**, her mother, had taught Sunday School at **Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church** for roughly twenty-five years before her death on **May 9, 1905**. Three years later, on the anniversary, the daughter filled the Grafton sanctuary with white carnations — her mother’s favorite flower — and inaugurated what she insisted should remain a quiet, church-centered observance [International Mother’s Day Shrine, 2026].

The carnation carried the meaning. Jarvis wrote that the flower’s *”whiteness is to symbolize the truth, purity and broad-charity of mother love; its fragrance, her memory, and her prayers”* [HISTORY.com, 2026]. By **1911**, services were being held in every state in the Union [Old Farmer’s Almanac, 2026]. The red-for-living, white-for-deceased convention familiar today did not come from Jarvis at all; it emerged from the floral industry in the 1920s after demand outran the supply of white blossoms [HISTORY.com, 2026].

### The Holiday Reaches Horry County’s Pews – Mother’s Day Horry County

When Wilson signed Proclamation 1268 on May 9, 1914, calling for *”a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country”* [Wilson Proclamation 1268, 1914], Horry County already had the infrastructure to receive it. **Conway’s Methodist congregation** had stood since **1828**, its 1910 Mission Revival sanctuary on Fifth Avenue still standing today [Horry County Historical Society, 2026].

**Kingston Presbyterian Church**, organized by **May 30, 1858**, sat in its Greek Revival sanctuary on the site of a colonial meetinghouse documented as far back as 1756 [Kingston Presbyterian Church, 2026]. **First Baptist Church of Conway**, founded in 1866, dedicated a brick sanctuary in **1906** — the same window in which Mother’s Day went national [SC Picture Project, 2026]. **Bethel A.M.E. Church** on Racepath Avenue, also founded around 1866, was already among the oldest African-American congregations in the county [MyHorryNews, 2017].

Earlier observances in those pews almost certainly occurred — Methodist congregations adopted the holiday quickly nationwide — but they are not documented in the surviving record. The earliest Mother’s Day–weekend church program yet found in Horry County is preserved on the front page of the **May 13, 1920 Horry Herald**: a Sunday School Day service scheduled for **Floyds Church** that Sunday, May 16. Its program included the line, *”Greeting to Mothers and Babies by the Supt. Roll Call of Babies. Welcome to Cradle Rollers by Mary Beth DuBose, Mabel Floyd and Lottie Ford”* [Horry Herald, 1920]. It is not the first Horry County observance. It is the earliest one we can prove.

### From Carnations to Commerce – Mother’s Day Horry County

Anna Jarvis lived to see her quiet memorial become an industry, and she revolted against it. She crashed a candy makers’ convention in Philadelphia in 1923. She was arrested in 1948 at a war mothers’ gathering where carnations were being sold.

She declared that *”a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world”* [Mental Floss, 2026]. The forecasted $38 billion Americans will spend this Sunday is the holiday she feared. Yet in Horry County’s tourism economy — built on brunches, hotel weekends, and the gardens at Brookgreen — the commerce and the reverence have learned to coexist.

### Conclusion

The story of Mother’s Day in Horry County is the story of who we were, who we became, and who we are still choosing to be. It is a daughter in West Virginia, a Cradle Roll at Floyds, a sanctuary on Fifth Avenue, a brunch reservation in Murrells Inlet. Tomorrow, in the pews and porch swings and seafood booths of the Grand Strand, Horry County families will honor mothers the way every generation has: imperfectly, locally, and on the only Sunday that bears their name.

### Further Reading

Mother’s Day Horry County – International Mother’s Day Shrine — https://www.internationalmothersdayshrine.org/

Mother’s Day Horry County – Wilson Proclamation 1268 (1914), American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara — https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-1268-mothers-day-1914

Mother’s Day Horry County – Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, *The History of Mother’s Day* — https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/history-mothers-day-global-peace-greeting-cards

Mother’s Day Horry County – The Horry Herald (1886–1923), South Carolina Digital Newspaper Program — https://historicnewspapers.sc.edu/lccn/sn93067628/

Mother’s Day Horry County – Horry County Historical Society — Independent Republic Quarterly — https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/irq/

Mother’s Day Horry County – South Carolina Mothers Collection, Louise Pettus Archives, Winthrop University — https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/scmothers/