Catherine Anne Warfield at the age of sixteen, Catherine married Robert Elisha Warfield, a son of the prominent Lexington, Kentucky physician and Thoroughbred breeder, Elisha Warfield. The couple settled in his Kentucky home, where they had six children together. After their mother's death, the sisters next suffered the death in 1844 of their half-sister Mary Jane Ellis LaRoche (who appeared to have suffered from post-partum depression and lingering mental illness for several years) and later their half-brother Thomas Ellis. After Eleanor died of yellow fever in 1849, Warfield ceased writing for several years, as she was stricken with depression. In the 1830s, Catherine
Katherine Anne Porter stairs, breaking her ankle. They divorced officially in 1915. In 1914 she escaped to Chicago, where she worked briefly as an extra in movies. She then returned to Texas and worked the small-town entertainment circuit as an actress and singer. In 1915, she asked that her name be changed to Katherine Anne Porter as part of her divorce decree. Also in 1915, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent the following two years in sanatoria, where she decided to become a writer. It was discovered during that time, however, that she had bronchitis, not TB. In 1917, she began writing