Kaye Otwell believes without a doubt that her sister’s house, behind, is the birthplace of William Sydney Porter, known around the world by his pen name O.Henry. Right: Alongside the driveway of the debated birthplace of O.Henry, a large millstone once served as a flowerbed. Brown’s sister, Kaye Otwell, who serves as family historian, says there’s no doubt O.Henry was born there. Many long-gone old timers in the community vouched for the site, she says. “There is no reason to dispute these elderly people,” says Otwell, who lives near the house. The creek passes it after flowing under Randleman Road coming from Pat and Dawn Short’s property. A big Dutch elm tree that probably dates to O.Henry’s time stands precariously in the front yard. The dwelling dates to 1810. “This house has raised so many people from different families,” Otwell says, adding she believes the Worth family, of whom O.Henry’s grandmother was a member, built the place. A family member, Jonathan Worth, was elected governor while living in nearby Randolph County. Supporting the claim that O.Henry was born there is the 1860 census. It shows Algernon Porter living in the southern district of Guilford County, although the census is unclear on exactly where. His famous son would be born two years later. While conducting her research, Arnett spent considerable time in the house with Otwell’s late grandmother and in the surrounding Centre community. Arnett made her case convincingly. A 1982 map showing Guilford County’s rural roads marks the house site as “O.Henry’s birthplace.” Otwell recalls that after Arnett’s book was published, generating considerable publicity, strangers stopped cars below the house to pick up pebbles — O.Henry souvenirs. Edward R. Murrow would come along years after O.Henry, in 1908, two years before the writer’s death at age 48. The Murrow birthplace is about a mile south of the O.Henry House as the creek flows. The Murrow home at
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the time was without electricity, running water, heat and other amenities. One biographer said, “He was born in the 20th century, but he was born of the 19th century.” “The modern world was emerging but had not touched Polecat Creek,” writes Joe E. Perico, author of Edward R. Murrow: An American Original, published in 1988. “There were no cars in Polecat Creek or electricity. There were no phones in Polecat Creek.” Murrow was born to a restless farmer, Roscoe Murrow, and a pious mother, Ethel Murrow, who wouldn’t say “hello” because it included the word “hell.” To expand his horizons beyond the Centre and Polecat Creek community, Roscoe Murrow joined the Army during the Spanish-American War. When he returned, according to another biographer, A.M. Sperber (Murrow: His Life and Times, 1996) he began telling friends “that one of these days he would be moving on to something better. Somewhere. Anywhere.” He made good on that pledge. In 1914, he took his wife and 6-year-old Egbert Murrow, as Edward was called as a child, left the community and moved across the nation to Washington state, where he became a train engineer. Ed Murrow would return occasionally as a youngster and as an adult to the Polecat Creek homestead to visit relatives. On one such visit in 1942, after speaking at Woman’s College (now UNCG), he met his future wife, Janet, who was aboard a train that had stopped at the Greensboro station downtown to pick up Murrow and other passengers. Later, after the Murrow family’s departure, the Polecat Creek house became the property of Ed Murrow’s cousin, Edgar Murrow, who added The Art & Soul of Greensboro