WEBSTER, W.Va. -- The abandoned, ramshackle house in this tiny town didn't look like an inviting place to explore.

But there was something about this neglected piece of history -- the birthplace house of Anna Jarvis -- that intrigued Olive Crow-Dadisman and Tom Dadisman during a road trip to Webster, W.Va. in 1993.

Maybe it was the little sign, overrun with bramble and weeds, stating that the founder of Mother's Day was born on May 1, Olive's own birthday.

And then something happened that changed the course of the couple's life. An elderly woman named Ocean Pearl Felton stuck her head out the window of a neighboring house.

"Do you want this old house?" asked Miss Felton, a Jarvis heir. "I have kept this house for someone who wants to take care of it."

The rest, as they say, is Mother's Day history.

The keys to the house were handed to the Dadismans on Mother's Day of 1994.

The couple, who got married in a Civil War-style ceremony, spent two years reviving the house and turning it into a charming Civil War era showcase.

They shoveled 4.5 tons of debris out of the house, and poured $100,000 of their own money into the project over the past 14 years. Volunteers helped them clean the grounds, as did inmates from the county jail and the Pruntytown Correctional Center.

The museum opened in 1996, and it averages 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a year, attracting people from every state and 26 countries.

Then the furnace blew up. The Dadismans, who formed a nonprofit group called Thunder on the Tygart Inc., applied for a state grant to replace it. They were awarded about $50,000 in state money to help build a gift center and pavilion, where they hold country music shows on Saturdays in the summer. They live in a few rooms off the gift center.

Every Mother's Day, Mr. Dadisman performs his original song called, "From a Tiny Seed Mother's Day was Born." The carpenter is also a singer/songwriter who performs in Nashville under the name Tommy Dee.

Because she has put so much of herself into the project, Mrs. Crow-Dadisman is an animated tour guide. "You are walking on the same floors as Anna Jarvis did," she said. "All the floors are original."

The former computer programmer and aide to the elderly has taken well to becoming a museum curator, digging up artifacts from the Jarvis family.

Some of the 5,050 items in the eight-room house are original -- including the two kitchen tables, the ringer washer, Miss Jarvis' high-fashion hat and shoe collection, and photos of Miss Jarvis. A quilt was made from 24 of her handkerchiefs.

The Dadismans even found grave markers of two of the deceased Jarvis children, and say the family had 13 children, not the 12 originally believed. (All but four died in childhood).

Many of the items in the collection are of the same era but not original to the house. Dolls, plates and furniture have been donated.

One of Mrs. Crow-Dadisman's favorites is a seventh-generation spinning wheel donated in 1999 by a man dying of cancer. "His daughters thought it was junk. He said, 'Would you please take it?' He died a happy man."

The Dadismans originally wanted to open a for-profit, Civil War themed amusement park, but scrapped those plans. They are busy enough.

Sometimes Mrs. Crow-Dadisman feels she's a kindred spirit to Anna Jarvis. Just as Miss Jarvis was relentless in pushing for a national observance for mothers and protecting its image, Mrs. Crow-Dadisman has been relentless in bringing back this historical marker.

"It's hard work. Sometimes it is hard to pay the bills. But at least someone came along and saved the Anna Jarvis' birthplace. We don't want Anna Jarvis' name to die again."

The Anna Jarvis Birthplace Museum is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday from April 1 to Dec. 31. Admission is $5. For information, call 1-304-265-5549. To get to Webster from Pittsburgh, take Interstate 79 South to Interstate 68 East to 119 South. (The museum is four miles past the International Mother's Day Shrine Museum in Grafton, W.Va.).