In partnership with the Worcester Historical Museum, Spectrum News 1 presents Worcester's Tercentennial, highlighting the city's most influential citizens in its 300-year history. 

Worcester's Esther Howland made Feb. 14 a well-known holiday in the United States and it all started with a piece of mail. Here's the story of how one of Worcester's native daughters became one of America's first female entrepreneurs.

According to Vanessa Bumpus, exhibit coordinator at the Worcester Historical Museum, Howland is recognized as the mother of the American Valentine.  Her father was a well-known business owner on Worcester. He owned a stationary shop and one day Howland got a European Valentine in the mail from one of her father's associates. Realizing she could do it better, she asked her father to order her some lace and different decorative items from his businesses in New York. When he delivered them she created her own Valentine with a simple verse and asked one of her brothers, who served as a salesman for her father, to take it out on the road and see what he could do. Her brother came back with the order, not for $200 but for $5,000, equivalent to about a $176,000 today.

Watch the video above for the rest of the story of Esther Howland, the Mother of the American Valentine and one of America's first female entrepreneurs.