📍Butcher Hollow, Van Lear, KY 41265, USA
1932 – 1948“I was born Loretta Webb in April 1932 in Butcher Hollow, a narrow valley in the mountains near Van Lear, Johnson County, Kentucky, the second of eight children. My daddy, Melvin, known as Ted, worked in the coal mines at Van Lear, and my mommy, Clara, raised us in a little wooden cabin with no electricity and no running water. We were poor, but we didn't know it: we had the hills, the creek, a garden and each other. Mommy papered the walls of our cabin with pages from magazines and catalogues, and I'd look at the pictures of movie stars and dream. We shopped at the company store in Van Lear and listened to the Grand Ole Opry on a battery radio on Saturday nights. I sang all the time, on the porch, in the garden, rocking the babies to sleep and at the little church. My daddy's hard life in the mines, the coal dust, the danger and the worry, stayed with me always. My younger sister Brenda grew up to be the singer Crystal Gayle, and my sister Peggy Sue and brother Jay Lee sang too. In January 1948, when I was fifteen, I married Oliver Lynn, whom everyone called Doolittle, and we soon moved to Washington state. He bought me a guitar, and I taught myself to play and write songs. In 1970 I wrote Coal Miner's Daughter about my childhood in Butcher Hollow, and it became my story. My brother Herman restored our homeplace, and for years he ran Webb's Grocery in the old company store, sending visitors up the hollow to see where it all began.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today