Henry was an only child, with neither brothers nor sisters. He was sickly, with very poor eyesight and that only in one eye, so that his mother home-schooled him in Washington, D.C. and their home in Nashville, Tennessee. until he was twelve years old. She then sent him to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he received his only formal education, at an academy run by an Episcopal priest, and he also ran the school paper, the "New Era", on a press his father donated.