[2] When Xavier Roberts was five, his father died in a car accident,[3] leaving his mother to raise him and his five siblings.
[citation needed] In 1976, Xavier Roberts met Martha Nelson Thomas at a craft fair.
Roberts created his own version in 1978, and in 1982 he licensed the dolls to Coleco for mass-production under the name Cabbage Patch Kids.
He won awards for his work, including a first-place ribbon for a doll named Dexter at the Osceola Craft Show in Florida in 1978.
Going into business as Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc., Roberts hired local seamstresses and started producing his dolls in a converted medical clinic in his hometown of Cleveland.