August 17, 2026
Introduction: In this second 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.
In 1880, seven-year-old Isaiah Mobley was listed as the sixth of seven children living in the household of his widowed mother, Rhoda Mobley, a 52-year-old farmer in Utica, Mississippi.
A decade earlier, two years before Isaiah’s birth, 40-year-old Rhoda appeared in Ryan C. Mobley’s household in Hinds County, Mississippi. Ryan C., a 54-year-old South Carolina-born farm laborer, had $625 in personal estate. Rhoda is his implied wife, as the federal census did not indicate relationships between household members that year.
Six others lived with them, all between 1 and 18 years, the oldest being Marcellus. Presuming they were the parents of these children, Ryan and Rhoda were married before 1852, probably in her Alabama birthplace, which is also the nativity of the two oldest children. The Mobleys migrated to Mississippi about 1855.
In the 1860 census, Ryan C. Mobley appears in Kemper County, Mississippi. His age is reported as 38, a few years off from the 1870 enumeration, and he is listed as a South Carolina native. He was a prosperous farmer, with $1,000 in personal property and $10,000 in real estate. Curiously, he lived alone. Where were Rhoda and the children? They were nowhere to be found.
Previously, Ryan lived in Greene County, Alabama, where at least one online family tree purports he married Rosalie (Rhoda) Coleman in 1851. No such marriage record is on file in that locality. “Can find no Rosalie in Greene County,” noted a descendant tracing this line.
FamilySearch records Ryan and Rosalie with their seven children.
In Part 1 of this series, I highlighted the actress Mary Ann Mobley. I wrote:
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.
Also in 1986, L. D. Mobley of Raymond, Mississippi, reported that he and Mary Ann Mobley’s father were first cousins. L. D.’s father was Ell Vaton Mobley, son of Ryan Coleman Mobley and Rosalie (Rhoda) Coleman Mobley. “The family had come from South Carolina by way of Eutaw, Alabama,” Mobley genealogists learned from L. D.
In 1900, Rhoda appeared in the federal census as Rosa. She was again listed as Rosa in the 1920 census when, at age 90, she was shown living in the household of her son Marcellus.
Her name – as carved in stone in McClellan Cemetery in Duke, Mississippi – is Rosalie Mobley. According to the grave marker, she was born in 1832 and died in 1924.
Online family trees commonly identify Ryan C. Mobley’s father as Larkin Mobley, also of Greene County, Alabama. Larkin died without leaving a will that named his heirs, but his probate case offers an important clue. In 1870, when the estate’s administrator petitioned the court to sell Larkin’s real estate for distribution among his heirs, the court ordered that notice of the proceeding be given to “Ryan C. Mobley of Hinds County, Mississippi.” The final settlement, filed in 1872, listed Ryan C. Mobley among the heirs who received shares of the estate.
County estate records show he received an earlier inheritance.
In 1850, Charles P. Coleman’s will stated that after the death of wife Fanny, “I give and devise and bequeath all my said property and Estate to my Nephew Ryan C. Mobley of Greene County, Alabama, in consideration of his kindness and services rendered to me and my wife in our old age.” The will, which appointed Larkin Mobley as executor, stated that his two children were living in Kemper County, Mississippi – Ryan’s residence in the 1860 census.
The 1850 federal census listed Larkin Mobley, a 63-year-old Kentucky-born farmer with $2,000 in real estate, living next door to Ryan C. Mobley in Greene County, Alabama. Others living in Larkin’s household that year were Lucinda Mobley, also 63, and Ervin Mobley, 23 (both South Carolina natives), and James M. Free, a 21-year-old Alabamian by birth. The two young men were overseers. That year, Larkin held six enslaved people.
Larkin Mobley had married his cousin, Lucinda. On 9 March 1839, Cullen Mobley of Fairfield District, South Carolina, appointed sons-in-law Simeon Hill and Ellison Mitchel as his agents to “take the management of all my personal property to sell the same to the highest bidder.” The proceeds of that sale would be placed in trust until his death, at which time it would be divided among his six daughters, including Lucy, “who has intermarried with Larkin Mobley.”
According to George A. Hill in Hill and Hill-Moberly Connections of Fairfield County, South Carolina, Cullen was a son of Alexander Mobley by his marriage to the “Widow Floyd.” Cullen’s brother, Micajah Mobley, married Elizabeth Moberly, daughter of William Moberly Sr. and Ann Osborn. In this convoluted intermarriage, William Sr. was the son of Edward Moberly, a first cousin to Alexander Mobley. (1)
Purportedly, Edward married Susannah DeRuel. George A. Hill wrote: “It is stated that he was the son or a descendant of William Moberley…[who] ran away from home and landed in Pennsylvania at the age of eighteen years.” As the story goes, he married Phoebe Lovejoy, a beautiful, educated, and refined Quaker who was a distant cousin to the wife of William Penn and their would-be governess, according to one elaborate story. (2)
“All proven data to date has indicated that there was never a ‘Phoebe Lovejoy,’” wrote researcher Robert W. Jennings. He speculated that “Susannah DeRuel” was probably Susannah DuVall, admitting it was unproven. (3) Over the years, her name has appeared on various online trees as the daughter of wealthy Huguenot Mareen Duvall – without attribution.
Stay tuned for the third and concluding part in this series, in which the Mobley family’s second path to the silver screen (involving the actress Anne Ramsey) joins the story of actress Mary Ann Mobley that was covered in Part 1.
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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) George A. Hill, “Hill and Hill-Moberly Connections of Fairfield County, South Carolina” (Ponca City, Okla.: the author, 1961), pp. 228-229.
(2) Ibid., p. 201.
(3) Robert W. Jennings (San Diego, Calif.) to the writer, 18 October 1983.
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