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
William Townsend Porter William Townsend Porter William Townsend Porter (1862-1949) was an American physician, physiologist, and medical educator who spent most of his career at Harvard Medical School. He founded the Harvard Apparatus company, which produced laboratory equipment for teaching and research in physiology, and was the founding editor of the "American Journal of Physiology". Porter was born on September 24, 1862, in Plymouth, Ohio. His father was also a physician. He attended the St. Louis Medical College (now the Washington University School of Medicine) and received his M.D. in 1885. He then studied physiological chemistry briefly in Philadelphia before traveling to Germany