Abbay & Leatherman

Robert Johnson was born out of wedlock, to Julia Dodds, whose husband had fled Hazlehurst after a feud with a prominent white family. By the early 1920s the boy was living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis, on the Abbay and Leatherman Plantation near Robinsonville. He showed little interest in cotton or school. Elder players Son House and Willie Brown, local barrelhouse musicians, gave him his tutelage. In the spring of 1930 his young wife and their baby died in childbirth, and he left the Delta to look for his father.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mississippi River State Park — 20 mi
  A state park and gateway to the St. Francis National Forest, where the river, Crowley's Ridge and the Delta meet, with a Trail of Tears site at the Mississippi and St. Francis confluence.
• C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa — 22 mi
  A National Historic Landmark Mississippian mound town on a bluff over the Mississippi, with a university museum, a replica house and a nature trail inside T. O. Fuller State Park.
• Elaine Massacre Memorial — 23 mi
  A memorial dedicated in 2019 in Helena for the Black people killed by white mobs and troops in the 1919 Elaine Massacre, the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history.
• Delta Cultural Center — 24 mi
  A state museum in downtown Helena where King Biscuit Time, the longest-running daily blues radio show, is broadcast live from the Visitors Center.

More markers nearby

• Hollywood Cafe — 3.0 mi
• Son House — 4.6 mi
• Highway 61 Blues — 5.6 mi
• Memphis Minnie — 15 mi