Mary Call Darby Collins
The Grove Museum
The Call-Collins House at The Grove Museum is the ancestral home of Mary Call Darby Collins (1911-2009), great-granddaughter of Richard Keith Call. Mary Call graduated from both Leon High School and the Florida State College for Women, and was heavily involved in her community throughout her life. Beginning in 1942, Mary Call and her family restored the Call-Collins House over a span of two decades.
As her husband, Governor LeRoy Collins, spoke out for civil rights on a national level, Mary Call dealt with the fallout at home, negotiating the reactions of friends and neighbors who disagreed with her husband’s belief that segregation was contrary to “moral, simple justice.”
A life-long historic preservationist, she worked to preserve the Union Bank, Florida's Historic Capitol, and Mount Vernon. The Florida Secretary of State's award for outstanding volunteerism in historic preservation is named in honor of Mary Call Darby Collins. It was her dream that The Grove would become a museum. Visit The Grove Museum and learn how the site represents Florida history from the territorial period to the present, and the evolution of civil rights in American history.
