Joe Frazier was born January 12, 1944, the twelfth child of Dolly Alston-Frazier and Rubin in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was raised in a rural community of Beaufort called Laurel Bay. Frazier said that he was always close to his father, who carried him when he was a toddler "over the 10 acres of farmland" the Fraziers worked as sharecroppers "to the still where he made his bootleg corn liquor, and into town on Saturdays to buy the necessities that a family of 10 needed." He was affectionately called "Billie Boy."