Abbott: Birthplace of Willie Nelson

Abbott is a small Hill County town named for a local politician, Jo Abbott, and built along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad in the eighteen eighties. It might have remained completely anonymous had Willie Nelson not been born there on April twenty-ninth, nineteen thirty-three. Nelson and his older sister Bobbie were raised by their paternal grandparents after both parents left; his grandfather gave him his first guitar, and his grandmother taught Bobbie to play piano.

The family attended the Abbott Methodist Church and Willie absorbed country and gospel music from the start. He left Abbott for Fort Worth in his teens, but the small-town Texas upbringing shaped everything he would write. His childhood home still stands at three oh seven Mesquite Street, and Abbott leans into its distinction.

Seventy miles south of Dallas, barely four hundred people, and one of the most famous birthplaces in country music history.