William Sidney Porter was born 11 September, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, to physician Algernon Sidney Porter (1825-1888) and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim (1833-1865). The two brothers of William were Shirley Worth (1860) and David Weir (1865) who both died in early childhood. Mary was a graduate of Greensboro Female College (founded in 1838) now Greensboro College. She wrote poetry and had a promising artistic temperament with a natural eye for drawing and painting, surely a talent which young Will inherited. She ran her household with a firm but loving hand. Tragically she died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty when Will was only three years old. His father Sidney was a gentle and good humoured man, gregarious, and generous to a fault. Absent-minded with a long flowing beard, he travelled Guilford county visiting his patients. As was the custom of the time, he never sent invoices to his patients; they were expected to settle once a year. Without his wife to stay on top of their accounts, finances dwindled and Sidney started to drink