There are a lot of old songs out there credited now to people who did not actually write them. Most of the songs the Carter family did that are credited to A.P. Carter were not actually written by him. A.P. traveled the hills of Virginia looking for songs for the group to do. Music publishers would not pay a royalty for a PD song unless someone was willing to claim credit for it. So, A.P. stepped up and claimed credit. A great example of this was "Keep on the Sunny Side" their theme song. It was written in and copyrighted in 1899 by Ada Blenkhorn and J. Howard Entwistle. It was even included in hymnals of the day. Both had died by 1927 when the copyright was up for renewal so it fell into the public domain. Carter learned it from his uncle, claimed writing credit and copyrighted it himself.