3 lights on a circiut. Powerin at first switch works fine on a 3way switch. Light feeds 2 other lights with their own switches. All works except when first one is off they are all off. If the first one is on, they all work on their own swith. What's wrong

Nothing is wrong from the sounds of it. It sounds like it has been wired like that on purpose. The #1 switch is "master" and the other 2 switchs allow you to light or not light the area when the "master" switch is on.

Yes, it could be, but I want to change the conections to allow each one to be powerd even when the master swith is not on. I'm sure the wires can be changed and am looking for the procedure to do so. Thanks for your response.

You would run the main line wire to your other switchs instead of the wire running from the master switch. That way you have independent power to each switch.
There should be a box where you can see the connection split. Be sure to turn off the breaker if your going into a junction box.

Why things are the way they are? Who knows. Maybe the person who did it didn't know any other way to do it. Maybe that was the only way to do it with out running another cable.

Whether the light can be made to operate independently by changing wire connections and not running another cable depends on how things are presently wired.

Where is the switch to lights 2 and 3? Is it next to and in the same box as one of the 3-way switches?

Remove switch covers and tell us how many and what kind of cables are in the switch boxes. A wire is a wire. A cable is two or more wires in an outer covering. A 2-wire cable will have a black, a white and a bare wire. A 3-wire cable will have a black, a white, a red and a bare wire.

If in conduit, you can pull a constant hot to each light. Then you can use a pull chain?
You need to get 1 conductor from switch to first light.

Thanks to you all that helped. Got it figured out today. Needed an extra hot feed to the first light, then out to the others. All is well and working safe and right now.