How to read this Johnny Cash family tree
Read the Johnny Cash family tree from the top down, one generation to a row. His parents stand over his brothers and sisters on the left, and June Carter’s parents over her on the right.
A portrait is a photograph
Four people have one in the public domain.
A silhouette has none
No free photograph is available for the other sixteen.
A line between two people is a marriage
The line to Vivian Liberto ended in divorce.
A double frame is the centre
Johnny Cash is the centre of the chart.
Ray and Carrie Cash, from Kingsland to Dyess
The Johnny Cash family tree begins in Cleveland County, Arkansas. J. R. Cash was born at Kingsland on 26 February 1932 to Ray Cash and Carrie Cloveree Cash, born Rivers.15 He used the name John R. Cash after he joined the Air Force, and Johnny Cash from 1955, when he signed with Sun Records.5
In March 1935, when J. R. was three, the family settled at Dyess in Mississippi County, a farm colony set up under the New Deal.51 Arkansas State University now keeps the family house as a heritage site, the Historic Dyess Colony.2
Roy, Louise, Jack, Reba, Joanne and Tommy
The second row of the Johnny Cash family tree holds the seven children of Ray and Carrie Cash, four sons and three daughters.10 J. R. had three older siblings, Roy, Margaret Louise and Jack, and three younger, Reba, Joanne and Tommy.51 Roy, born in 1921, became a car dealer in Memphis. Louise was born at Kingsland on 1 March 1924.3
Jack died in May 1944, aged fifteen, about a week after an accident with a table saw. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas and Wikipedia place it at a sawmill, Hello magazine in a school workshop.153
Reba, born on 28 January 1934, was her brother’s personal assistant from 1960 to 1995 and ran House of Cash, his company. She died on 5 March 2006.34 Joanne has made more than 25 records and helped found the Nashville Cowboy Church.3 Tommy, the youngest, born at Dyess on 5 April 1940, reached number 4 on the Billboard country chart with Six White Horses and died on 13 September 2024.10
Vivian Liberto and the four daughters
The first branch of the Johnny Cash family tree began on 18 July 1951, when Cash met Vivian Liberto at a roller rink in San Antonio, Texas. They married at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in San Antonio on 7 August 1954.57
They had four daughters, Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara.7 The couple separated in 1962. Wikipedia gives the divorce as 1966, and the Encyclopedia of Arkansas as early 1968.51 Vivian married Dick Distin in 1968 and died at Ventura, California, on 24 May 2005.7
June Carter and the Carter Family
The second marriage joined the Johnny Cash family tree to the Carter Family of Virginia. Valerie June Carter was born at Maces Spring on 23 June 1929, a daughter of Ezra Carter and Maybelle Carter, born Addington, who had married in 1926.689 Maybelle sang in the Original Carter Family with Ezra’s brother A. P. Carter and his wife Sara, who was Maybelle’s cousin. After A. P. and Sara divorced, Ezra managed the group.89 June sang with her mother and her sisters Helen and Anita as the Carter Sisters.6
June married the singer Carl Smith in 1952, and their daughter became the singer Carlene Carter. Her marriage to Edwin Nix in 1957 brought a daughter, Rosie, born in 1958.613 Cash proposed to June on stage at London, Ontario, on 22 February 1968, and they married at Franklin, Kentucky, on 1 March.5 June died at Nashville on 15 May 2003, and Cash on 12 September that year. Both are buried at Hendersonville.61
Johnny CashA promotional portrait for Sun Records, 1955.
June Carter CashAt the White House in May 1988.
Maybelle CarterWith her autoharp, 1963.
Tommy CashA press photograph, 1969.
Rosanne Cash, John Carter Cash and Carlene Carter
Rosanne Cash, the eldest daughter, was born at Memphis on 24 May 1955. She has had 11 number one country singles and won Grammy awards in 1985 and 2015.11
The only child of Johnny and June, John Carter Cash, was born on 3 March 1970. He is a musician, record producer and author.12 Carlene Carter, born on 26 September 1955, is Rosanne’s stepsister. Rosie Nix Adams died in October 2003.13116
Many people in this generation are living, so the Johnny Cash family tree gives only their names, years and public careers, and draws no grandchildren.
Older roots of the Johnny Cash family tree
Cash was mainly of English and Scottish descent. After he met Major Michael Crichton-Stuart, the laird of Falkland in Fife, he traced his surname to Fife in the eleventh century, and Wikipedia records his descent from William Cash of Strathmiglo.5
His paternal grandmother said the family had Cherokee ancestors. A DNA test Rosanne Cash took for the television series Finding Your Roots in 2021 found no known Native American markers.5
How this Johnny Cash family tree was drawn
The pages that rank for this search are mostly genealogy databases and celebrity lists, whose lists of siblings and daughters often disagree. This chart gives a year and a numbered source for each person where one exists, and opens in the editor. The guide to genograms for family history shows how to draw two marriages and stepchildren.
Questions about the Johnny Cash family tree
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 20 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 13 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.