O. Henry

On July 1, 1887, he eloped and married Athol Estes, then a seventeen year old girl of a wealthy family. After long suffering from tuberculosis, Athol died on July 25, 1897. They had a daughter Margaret Worth Porter, born in September 1889.

In 1907, he married Sarah Lindsey Coleman, a writer and his childhood sweetheart, but she left him in 1909.

On June 5, 1910, he died of several complications including an enlarged heart, cirrhosis of liver and diabetes.

He was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, to Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter. His father was a physician.

He lost his mother to tuberculosis when he was just three after which he and his father went on to live with his paternal grandmother.

He came under the care of his aunt Evelina Maria Porter and completed his graduation from her elementary school in 1876. Thereafter he studied at the ‘Lindsey Street High School’.

He was an avid reader since his childhood and enjoyed reading ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ and ‘One Thousand and One Nights’.

He began to work in a drugstore of his uncle in 1879. He became a licensed pharmacist in 1881.

In pursuit of improving his health condition due to a persistent cough, in March 1882, he travelled to Texas along with Dr. James K. Hall and stayed at Hall’s son, Richard’s sheep ranch in La Salle County. There he read classic literature, worked as a baby-sitter, shepherd and cook and learned bits of German and Spanish from the culturally diverse helping hands of the ranch.

In 1884 he travelled to Austin along with Richard and stayed in the latter’s friends house. In Austin he became involved with a group of young men who formed the ‘Hill City Quartet’. O. Henry, a good singer and musician himself started singing with the group in gatherings.

In 1887, with the help of Richard, who by then became the ‘Texas Land Commissioner’, he joined the ‘Texas General Land Office’ (‘GLO’) as draftsman drawing a monthly salary of $100. At the same time he wrote for newspapers and magazines.

Characters and plots of many of his stories like ‘Buried Treasure’ and ‘Georgia’s Ruling’ were woven in the ‘GLO’ building. Resemblance of the building was also found in few of his stories like the 1894 published ‘Bexar Scrip No. 2692’.

When Richard Hall lost to Jim Hogg in the 1890 election for governor, O. Henry resigned in early 1891.

The ‘O. Henry Award’ is given annually for remarkable short stories.

The federal courthouse where he was convicted is named as ‘O. Henry Hall’.

The ‘Soviet Postal Service’ issued a stamp in 1962 marking his birth centenary and on September 11, 2012, the ‘U.S. Postal Service’ issued a stamp marking his 150th birth anniversary.