Ava Gardner - Early Years

Early Years

Gardner was born in the big farming community of Smithfield, Johnston County, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children (she had two brothers, Raymond and Melvin, and four sisters, Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra). Her parents, Mary Elizabeth "Mollie" (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner, were poor cotton and tobacco farmers. Her ancestry was said to include Scots-Irish, English, Irish, French Huguenot, and American Indian (Tuscarora). She was raised a Baptist. While the children still were young, the Gardners lost their property, forcing Jonas Gardner to work at a sawmill and Mollie to begin working as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School.

When Gardner was seven years old, the family decided to try their luck in a larger city, Newport News, Virginia, where Mollie Gardner found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers. While in Newport News, Gardner's father became ill and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Ava was 15 years old. After Jonas Gardner's death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Mollie Gardner ran another boarding house for teachers. Ava Gardner attended high school in Rock Ridge and she graduated from there in 1939. She then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year.