O. Henry O. Henry William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise endings. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his middle name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825–88), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833–65). William's parents had married on April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died after birthing her third child, and he and his
Bertha Porter never travelled to Egypt. Instead, from 1924, she relied on Rosalind Moss to do field-work; Moss took over Porter's responsibilities upon her retirement. The bibliography is commonly referred to as Porter & Moss. Bertha Porter Bertha Porter (1852-1941) was an English biographer and bibliographer known for her editorial role in the compilation of the "Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings". Bertha Porter was born in 1852 to Frederick William Porter, an architect of Irish birth and from 1860 surveyor to the Worshipful Company of Clothworkers, and his wife Sarah Moyle; little is known of Bertha's life,