Robert Lee Parton

Robert Lee Parton, who went by his middle name, Lee, was the father of Dolly Parton and her eleven siblings. He worked in the mountains of East Tennessee, first as a sharecropper and later tending his own small tobacco farm and acreage, and took construction jobs to supplement the farm's small income. Although he was illiterate, Dolly Parton often said he was one of the smartest people she had ever known when it came to business and making a profit.