Born in
Copper Creek, Virginia, the daughter of William Sevier Dougherty and Nancy Elizabeth Kilgore, at age 16 she married
A. P. Carter on June 18, 1915; they divorced in 1936. On Carter Family recordings, Sara is credited as author of the songs "Fifty Miles of Elbow Room" and "Keep on the Firing Line"; in truth she discovered these
public domain songs when they were being sung at a
Seventh-day Adventist church she visited. RCA gave her songwriter credit, as it did A.P. Carter on his public domain discoveries. The Carter Family recordings of these tunes brought the songs worldwide fame. Sara wrote or co-wrote several other songs, including "My Foothills Home", "The Dying Soldier", "Lonesome Pine Special", "Farther On", and "Railroading on the Great Divide". Sara reunited with Maybelle in 1966 for a Columbia Records album titled "An Historic Reunion," which was later re-issued on Bear Family Records, with additional songs, as "Sara and Maybelle Carter." They performed together during the folk music craze of the 1960s at the Newport Folk Festival. although she and Maybelle remained close for the rest of their lives and Sara and Coy journeyed yearly from California to Virginia by car, pulling a travel trailer. In the early 1970s, Sara and Maybelle reunited to appear on
Johnny Cash's network television show and to perform together at the first annual A.P. Carter Memorial Festival in
Hiltons, Virginia. == Family tree==