Born Loretta Webb into poverty in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky in 1932, Loretta Lynn grew up in a one-room shack without running water with her seven siblings, according to CNN. She married Oliver Lynn at age 15. Her music career began modestly, but by 1966 she’d become the first woman to pen a No. 1 country song. She would eventually sell more than 45 million records worldwide, per Southern Living. The same year, she purchased a huge estate in Tennessee that she eventually opened as a popular camping site and museum, per Tennessee River Valley. The hugely popular 1980 biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and promotional deals also brought in money. Billboard estimates Lynn earned about $341,000 in 2021 from her songwriting royalties alone.
Even in her final days, Lynn kept working, working on songs and writing a devotional book — “A Song and a Prayer” — that came out after her death, per Today. “She just always had so many irons in the fire,” her daughter Peggy told the outlet in May 2023. Lynn also spent her final months planning her funeral and estate. “Loretta wants to turn most of her physical holdings into cash so she doesn’t burden her kids and grandkids with having to sell off stuff when she’s gone,” the unnamed family friend told Radar Online just days before her death.
