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 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, other than that she moved in literary circles. Porter was engaged by Sidney Lee to write for the Dictionary of National Biography, completing 156 biographies by the time she left. Francis Llewellyn Griffith,