Katherine Anne Porter to American frontiersman Daniel Boone and the writer O. Henry (whose real name was William Sydney Porter), her father's second cousin. In 1892, when Porter was two years old, her mother died two months after giving birth to her last child. Porter's father took his four surviving children (an older brother had died in infancy) to live with his mother, Catherine Ann Porter, in Kyle, Texas. The depth of her grandmother's influence can be inferred from Porter's later adoption of her name. Her grandmother died while taking eleven-year-old Callie to visit relatives in Marfa, Texas. After her grandmother's death, the
William Porter (Attorney General) however, was quite typical for Porter's personality. He also turned down a knighthood and a chief justiceship among other offers. He retired from politics in 1873 and returned to Ireland, leaving a prosperous, democratic and stable Cape Colony with a rapidly growing economy. He settled in Belfast for his final years and died in 1880. The tiny town of Porterville, Western Cape, (est.1863) was named after him. William Porter (Attorney General) William Porter (1805–1880) was attorney-general of the Cape Colony and a drafter of its first constitution in 1854. William Porter was born in Ireland (Derry) on 15 September 1805