Oliver Hardy in north Georgia in the 1905 fall semester when he was 13. He had little interest in formal education, although he acquired an early interest in music and theater. He joined a theatrical group and later ran away from a boarding school near Atlanta to sing with the group. His mother recognized his talent for singing and sent him to Atlanta to study music and voice with singing teacher Adolf Dahm-Petersen. He skipped some of his lessons to sing in the Alcazar Theater for $3.50 a week. Hardy began styling himself "Oliver Norvell Hardy", adding the first name "Oliver" as
Amory Nelson Hardy Amory Nelson Hardy Amory Nelson Hardy or A.N. Hardy (1835–1911) was a photographer in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. Portrait subjects included US president Chester A. Arthur, clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, politician James G. Blaine, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., writer Julia Ward Howe, labor activist Florence Kelley, suffragist Mary Livermore, philanthropist Isabella Somerset, and suffragist Frances Willard. He also made "electric-light portraits" of roller skaters in 1883. Hardy was born in Carmel, Maine, son of schoolteacher Benjamin Hardy. He married Angeline S. Davis in 1857 and had three children: