Carri Edgar was disowned by her family for marrying the man she loved, Oliver Hale. Their daughter Ollie was born in Middlesboro, Kentucky, on April Fools Day of 1896. On the very day Ollie was born, her father was killed in a coal mining accident. Ollie’s mother remarried, and she and her new husband had ten more children. By the age of fifteen, Ollie was sold into marriage to a coal miner in Thurber, Texas. At age sixteen, she had a daughter of her own, Mary Lee. When Ollie was twenty, her husband abandoned her and Mary in Thurber. Ollie was told she would have to leave the mining town, so she took Mary by the hand and walked down a lonely dirt road leading out of town. All she had was 37 cents and a prayer. But would that be enough?
