Introduction: In this first of a three-part series, James Pylant explores the Mobley family tree, which has connections to Hollywood. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.

Mary Ann Mobley

When Bert Parks introduced Miss Mississippi Mary Ann Mobley at the 1959 Miss America pageant (which occurred in September 1958), he infamously rendered her deep-rooted Magnolia State surname as “moab-lee” instead of “mob-lee.” Yet his mispronunciation followed the beauty pageant winner into the national spotlight as she launched an acting career. She made two films with Elvis Presley – Girl Happy and Harum Scarum – both in 1965. That same year she received the Golden Globe Award for “New Star of the Year – Actress.”

In a 43-year acting career, Mary Ann appeared in seven films and dozens of TV shows. Yet despite being Miss America and an established actress, piecing together her family tree is an interesting genealogy challenge, as this article shows, relying primarily on census records and newspaper articles.

Because Mississippi birth records are not open to the public, no primary birth certificate for Mary Ann is available to researchers; her birth must be reconstructed from the surrounding documentary evidence. Biographical sources sometimes report 1939 as her year of birth; however, her grave marker states 17 February 1937. (1) She was born in Biloxi but raised in the Jackson suburb of Brandon. (2)

Six and a half months before the birth of Mary Ann, the wedding of her parents, Bob Mobley and Mary Moore Farish, on 31 July 1936 had been of “much social interest,” though the couple kept it a quiet nighttime ceremony at a minister’s home in Jackson, “attended only by relatives and close friends.” The newlyweds made their home in Biloxi. (3)

The 1940 federal census reported Mary Ann, age two “at last birthday,” in Rankin County, 165 miles northwest of her birthplace. She and her 21-year-old mother then lived in the household of her maternal grandmother, Mary Farish, a widow. Great-grandfather John T. Stuart also lived with them, making four generations under one roof.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann’s 24-year-old father, Bob Mobley, lived with his parents in Hinds County, where he worked as a foreman for a river dredge project. Although the couple lived in different counties, census enumerations indicated they were still married. The two, however, would later divorce.

Mary (Farish) Mobley remarried an attorney, David Williams, in Brandon. In 1950, the federal census listed 13-year-old Mary Ann Mobley in the Williams household with her three-year-old half-sister.

On 6 September 1958, Mary Ann was crowned the new Miss America.

Mary Ann married actor Gary Collins in November 1967, and they had one child, Clancy. (Daughter Clancy Collins-White is an executive at Warner Bros.) At her wedding, newspapers reported that the former Miss America walked down the aisle on the arm of her stepfather rather than her father. Mary Ann acknowledged she knew little of her paternal roots.

Mary Ann and Gary were married for 45 years, until his death in 2012. She died at the age of 77 on 9 December 2014.

Bob Mobley

In 1986, Mary Ann had been asked by family genealogist Richard Mobley about her father.

“The only information I have for you is that my father, Bob Mobley, was born in Utica, Mississippi,” she wrote back. “Unfortunately, I do not know the date of my father’s death, I only know that it was in Vicksburg, Mississippi,” she explained in a follow-up.

Bob Mobley was born on 13 July 1907.

Newspaper coverage of his 1936 wedding to Mary Farish stated he was a graduate of Mississippi State College, school of science, class of 1931, and that his parents were Mr. and Mrs. I. Mobley of Utica.

He served in World War II and the Korean War and retired from the U.S. Corps of Engineers. He remarried Margaret Stockard, and they had one son. He died in Biloxi on 9 July 1979. His obituary in the Vicksburg Post made no acknowledgment of daughter Mary Ann. (4)

Isaiah Mobley

In 1920, 12-year-old Bob and his three siblings lived in the home of his father, Isaiah Mobley, a 46-year-old Hinds County farmer.

A native of that county, Isaiah was born in May 1872 and died at 75 in Vicksburg on 28 February 1948. (5) He and Alma Ross were married in Hinds County on 8 February 1896.

Stay tuned for more information about the Mobley family tree in Part 2.

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Note on the header image: close-up of Mary Ann Mobley. Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Wikimedia Commons.

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(1) Emma G. Fitzsimmons, “Mary Ann Mobley, a Midcentury Miss America and an Actress, Dies at 75 [sic],” The New York Times, 10 December 2014.
(2) Emily Wagster Pettus, “Former Miss America Mobley buried in Mississippi,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), 16 December 2014, p. 7A.
(3) “Mobley-Farish Rites Are Solemnized Here on Night of July 31,” Clarion-Ledger, 4 August 1936, p. 5.
(4) “Bob Mobley Dies, Rites Wednesday,” Vicksburg Post (Vicksburg, Miss.), 10 July 1979, p. 2.
(5) “Isaiah Mobley Rites Set Tuesday,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), 2 March 1941, p. 11, which names his children as sons Dewitt, Floyd, and Bob Mobley, and daughters Mrs. V. A. Taylor, Mrs. W. K. Spruitt, Mrs. W. W. Breitenback, and Mrs. W. E. Moss.