Henry Leverage (1879-1931)-Part Two

David Carroll Henry, later known as the author Henry Leverage, was born in Wa-Keeney, Trego County, Kansas, on October 9, 1879, to John Cummings Henry (1848-1901) and Susan Ann (McFadden) Henry (ca. 1856-?). David C. Henry had younger sister, Sadie Lucinda Henry, later Vinschger.

I found David C. Henry in the U.S. Census of 1880 (in Wa-Keeney, Kansas) and Henry Leverage in the New York State Census of 1915 (at Sing Sing Prison) and nothing in between. That's okay, for Robert Messenger has the early part of Leverage's career covered in his blog posting of November 7, 2019. Henry, aka Leverage, was a liar, or a self-booster, however you'd like to think of it. He told all kinds of stories about going to sea, traveling in the Far East and Europe, and fighting in the Great War. He was a bit like L. Ron Hubbard, minus the utter insanity and the deadly danger he represented to people he perceived as his enemies. (Both men claimed expeditions to Alaska. Leverage was charged with inciting a riot in San Francisco in 1912, too, at Pier 54 as the Star of Russia was about to sail. That's one example I can find of his criminal misadventures.) In any case, Leverage's crazy way of life caught up with him in late 1914 when he was sent upriver by New York Judge William H. Wadhams for receiving stolen property (an automobile). Claiming that his real name was Charles Henley, Leverage was received at Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, on December 16, 1914. He was single, in good health, stood 5 feet 5-1/2 inches tall, and weighed all of 121 pounds. After two years, four months, and 28 days in Sing Sing, Leverage was released on April 17, 1917, just eleven days after the American entry into the Great War, a war in which Leverage did not fight, even if he later claimed that he had. Before going up, he said in court, "I admit that I have been an ocean card sharp and a general crook and that I did not have to steal." But he did anyway. The good thing, I guess, is that he seems to have turned his life around while in prison.

Leverage was a newspaper editor at Sing Sing. He began as editor of The Star of Hope in April 1916, succeeding former attorney Henry Hoffman Browne. After The Star of Hope went out of business, Leverage became editor of the weekly Star-Bulletin, in February 1917. While he was in prison, Leverage also wrote the screenplay for The Twinkler (1916), a prison drama based on his own story. The film, now lost, starred William Russell and Charlotte Burton and was released on December 18, 1916.

William Leverage was the author of scores of short stories in the crime, detective, aviation, railroad, Western, romance, and other genres. His series characters include Chester Fay and "Big Scar" Guffman. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists the following stories in the genres of science fiction and fantasy:

• "The Wild Star" in All-Story Weekly, December 29, 1917
• "The Skywaymen" in All-Story Weekly, February 15, 1919
• "The Voice in the Fog" in Weird Tales, June 1923
• "Black Light" in Scientific Detective Monthly, April 1930
• "The Sealed Room" in Amazing Detective Tales, June 1930
• "The Black Cabinet" in Amazing Detective Tales, September 1930

For Munsey's Magazine, he wrote "The Absconder," "The Gray Brotherhood," "The White Moll," and others. For The Saturday Evening Post, he wrote perhaps his most successful story, "Whispering Wires," a mystery adapted to the stage by Kate L. McLaurin and to the silver screen by William M. Conselman. The movie version was released in 1926 and starred Anita Stewart.

The FictionMags Index has a list of Henry Leverage's credits from 1917 to 1932. These include stories in Adventure, The Argosy, Battle Stories, Black Mask, The Blue Book Magazine, Clues, Cosmopolitan, Detective Story Magazine, Flynn's Weekly, Prison Stories, Railroad Man's Magazine, Short Stories, Star Magazine, Telling Tales, Top-Notch, and others. I found two more in newspapers, "Shyster Lawyers and Human Souls" in the Leavenworth New Era (July 14, 1916) and "An Occasional Offender" in the Sacramento Union (Nov. 27, 1927).

In addition, Leverage wrote novels, The Shepherd of the Sea (1920, a "Northern" rather than a Western), Where Dead Men Walk (1920), The Ice Pilot (1921), The Phantom Alibi: A Detective Story (1926), and The Purple Limited: A Detective Story (1927). His non-fiction included "Two Years of Prison Reform" in Forum, published in May 1917, just a month after he was released from prison. He also wrote a column, "Dictionary of the Underworld," which appeared in Flynn's Weekly from January to May 1925.

Henry Leverage married a woman named May. They were enumerated in the 1930 U.S. Census while living in Los Angeles. He died on February 24, 1931, at Druskin Hospital in New York City at age fifty-one, the same age as his father when he died.

Henry Leverage's Story in Weird Tales

"The Voice in the Fog" (June 1923)

Further Reading

Yesterday's Faces: From the Dark Side by Robert Sampson (1987, pp. 81+), plus lots of newspaper articles about him and his father.

An advertisement for the stage adaptation of Whispering Wires, from the Sacramento Union, November 10, 1926.

Thanks to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and The FictionMags Index.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Henry Leverage (1879-1931)-Part One

Né David Carroll Henry

Aka David Carl Henry, Carl Henry, Carl Henry Leverage, Charles Henley, Winfield Byrd, Sing Sing No. 65368
Author, Newspaper Editor, Movie Scenarist
Born October 9, 1879, Wa-Keeney, Trego County, Kansas
Died February 24, 1931, Druskin Hospital, New York, New York

I began with the author Henry Leverage on June 30, 2022, but gave up on him when his case became too complicated, confused, unclear, and uncertain. Usually when you're doing this kind of research, if something seems wrong, it is wrong. Or as a fence builder I met in the Missouri Ozarks said when talking about fence posts, "If it looks crooked, it probably is crooked." Anyway, there was a reason for my confusion, and it's because "Leverage" was a liar, and he seems to have lied about everything in his life. From more than one hundred years distance, he looks crooked, like a crooked post. In fact he admitted that he was a crook, and so I can honestly say that I'm not impugning the reputation of a long-dead man. Yes, he was a liar, or a teller of tales if you want to be nice about it, and a convicted criminal, but he also told real fictional tales--i.e., pulp fictional tales--after he was released from prison. You could say that Leverage leveraged his lies against potential profits to be made as an author. Maybe personal economic considerations decided him on his adopted surname.

I am not the discoverer of Henry Leverage's identity. That distinction goes, I assume, to Robert Messenger of Canberra, Australia, who writes on the blog ozTypewriter: The Wonderful World of Typewriters. You can find Mr. Messenger's posting on Henry Leverage, entitled "Henry Leverage -- The Pulp Fiction Author Who Made His Corona 3 Portable Typewriter Sing Sing: Seven Million 'Sold Words' in 11 Years" and dated November 7, 2019, by clicking here. Mr. Messenger's angle is to write about Leverage's use of a Corona portable typewriter during his successful career as an author of short stories and novels. I won't rehash Robert Messenger's biography of Leverage. I'll just provide some facts, many of which are peripheral, as well as make some corrections.

According to Robert Messenger, Henry Leverage was actually David Carroll Henry, not British at all, as he claimed, but peculiarly American and born plumb in the middle of the country, in fact about one hundred miles from the geographic center of the United States at that time. His father was John Cummings Henry (b. June 19, 1848, Ontario, Canada; d. May 3, 1901, at home, Denver, Colorado), who is supposed to have invented the first electric streetcar in the world, put into operation in Kansas City in 1883. The elder Henry was an electrical engineer and was supposed to have held more than 70 patents. He was more than that, too.

I have found John C. Henry in the U.S. Census of 1880 in Wa-Keeney, Kansas. His son, David C. Henry, was then eight months old. It is from that record that I have been able to find out more about John C. Henry and to trace him and his family through public records. Unfortunately, the man later known as Henry Leverage is hard to find in those records, and so his life story and all of the assumptions I must make about him are secured only on one end, at least at this point in my research. (We'll see how things develop.) If Henry Leverage wasn't David Carroll Henry, then I don't know what to think. It seems like he was, though.

John C. Henry was a pioneer in what is now Trego County, Kansas. I assume that he arrived in that place by railroad, which had been laid down in the area in 1868. A newspaper item from 1888 states that Henry was "the first to obtain a patent for a quarter section of land [i.e., 160 acres]" and "the first to build a substantial residence" in Trego County. The first patent for his quarter-section of land was dated March 1, 1873. I have found record of a second patent, dated September 6, 1876*, for that same quarter-section, namely, the Northwest 1/4 of Section 8, Township 12 South, Range 23 West. A newspaper article from 1879 says that "the first furrow of prairie sod [in Trego County] was turned by him." He later grew millet and wheat. Henry built his house, a stone construction, at Trego Tank in 1875. His farm, described as "handsome" and "prosperous," was about a mile west of the later site of Wa-Keeney.

Prior to that, on May 28, 1874, Henry was appointed postmaster of Park's Fort, a 30-foot x 30-foot sod embankment with no buildings, only tents, located about six miles west of Ogallah and about two miles east of what became Wa-Keeney. That same article states that the railroad station at Park's Fort was moved to Henry's farm, and though the wording is ambiguous, it appears as though there were two or three saloons there, while "the principal industry was the collection of buffalo bones and hides." In other words, Henry's farm seems to have been the original settlement in Trego County, before the founding of Wa-Keeney in 1877-1879. In 1879, Henry and a partner acquired a general store in Wa-Keeney, renaming it Henry & Kyle. He ran a meat market in a 12 x 15-foot building in Wa-Keeney and became secretary of the Wa-Keeney Coal Prospecting Company in 1880. Henry seems to have been a prominent and accomplished man in his adopted home country, state, county, and town.

There is still a house in that lonely quarter, located not far to the west of the current Wakeeney. (The hyphen was dropped in the early 1900s.) An online "street" view from dusty Old U.S. Highway 40 shows a lane behind a double pipe gate that leads to a distant, weathered house, well away from the road. It looks like there are other structures there, too. Was that Henry's house? I can't say. But Trego Tank was located one mile west of Wa-Keeney, and so it was in about the right place for Henry's quarter-section and that old gray house still standing. Trego Tank was for several years the only stop along the Kansas Pacific Railroad in what became Trego County. There was a deep well there and a large windmill. I don't see a windmill in the "street"-view picture I'm looking at, but there is a low, brushy area with a few trees, and so maybe there is water not far below the surface. This is at the top of a ravine that flows to the south, soon into Big Creek. There must be water there after all. Now comes news that Henry's horse Patsey was killed at Trego Tank on July 16, 1880, by a westbound train. Called "the old favorite," Patsey "had a reputation second to none for his speed and endurance." A month later, an article by Henry on "changing the climate" made the rounds of Kansas newspapers. His article was about water, which was and is one of the defining resources and issues of the American West.

Platted and established in 1877-1879, Wa-Keeney was named for its founders, Albert E. Warren and James F. Keeney. The two men were boosters, and the place that they founded is referred to on line as a "colony." That colony seems to have been from Chicago. A plat map from 1886 shows a place west of Wa-Keeney called Colony Station. I'm not sure whether there is a connection between the "colony" of Wa-Keeney and the place called Colony Station. In any case, by 1883, Wa-Keeney was in decline due to crop failures and other misfortunes. Nonetheless, Wakeeney still exists as the seat of Trego County government. As it so happens, we drove that way several years ago on our way to Denver. Not long after that, I based a long short story on that trip and one of its sights, the World's Wonder View Tower, or Tower Museum, at Genoa, Colorado.

John C. Henry seems to have been gone from Trego County by 1884, when he appears to have lost his farm after having become delinquent on his taxes. Maybe the misfortunes of the early 1880s turned Wa-Keeney from a boomtown to a bust. Anyway, when I said that Henry Leverage was peculiarly American, what I meant is that he may have been what I have described before as an American type, the commercial crackpot or the earnest conman. He seems to have been a low type of character, but maybe he came into the world in a place started by high and respectable men of the same essential type. Maybe he learned something from them.

By the way, Trego County was named for Captain Edgar Poe Trego (1838-1863) of the 8th Kansas Infantry, who was killed in action at the Battle of Chickamauga on September 19, 1863. So it looks like Henry Leverage, a teller of weird tales, began life in a place named for a man who was named (presumably) for the original teller of weird tales in America, who was of course Edgar Allan Poe.

---

*That was less than three months after the Battle of Little Bighorn, which happened two-and-a-half states and about 700 miles to the northwest of Trego Tank.

* * *

According to Robert Messenger, Henry Leverage, né David Carroll Henry, was born in Wa-Keeney, Trego County, Kansas, on October 9, 1879, so just a few months after Trego County was organized on June 21, 1879. His father was, again, John Cummings Henry. His mother was Susan Ann (McFadden) Henry, a Pennsylvanian born in about 1856. David C. Henry and his younger sister, Sadie Lucinda Henry (b. July 28, 1881, Kansas City, Missouri; d. ?), were baptized in Philadelphia, at Norris Square Methodist Episcopal Church, on November 4, 1886. The Henry family lived in Wa-Keeney, Kansas, and Denver, Colorado, presumably also in Kansas City, Missouri (in the 1880s). John C. Henry died at home in Denver on May 3, 1901, and was buried at Fairmount Cemetery in that city. His wife and daughter afterwards shared a household in Montclair, New Jersey (1910, 1920, 1930). By 1940, Susan A. Henry was gone. In the meantime, Sadie L. Henry had married Edward J. Vintschger, later chairman of the board of Markt & Hammacher Company, a New York-based export firm co-founded by his father. They lived in Montclair for many years. David C. Henry was nowhere in sight. Sadie's husband, then, was presumably straight, while her brother was admittedly crooked.

To be continued . . .

Wa-Keeney, Kansas, 1880s, from the website Legends of Kansas.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley

Adrian Pordelorrar (?-?)

I would like to start out writing about the July 1925 issue of Weird Tales by writing about the last author listed in its table of contents. He or she was Adrian Pordelorrar.

Adrian Pordelorrar was almost certainly a pseudonym. I haven't found anyone by that name or surname in my searches of newspapers and public records. The last name Pordelorrar is unusual to say the least. Nothing comes back for it in an Internet search, either. That makes me think that there is meaning in the name, and so I have tried breaking it apart and entering its parts in an online translator. I had thought that the name could be from the Esperanto, but I didn't get very far in that. Por and del are easy enough. They are prefixes in Spanish. That leaves -orrar as the main part of the name. Orrar isn't a word in Spanish, but llorar is. It means "to cry."

If the last name Pordelorrar has significant meaning, then maybe the given name Adrian does, too. It's an ancient Latin name, a variation of Hadrian or Hadrianus. The root word seems to be adur, meaning "sea" or "water." Together, maybe the poet's name means something like "water of the crying" or "water for the crying." Maybe someone who knows Spanish can propose a better meaning or translation. As an alternative, maybe Adrian refers to the Roman emperor Hadrian as a conqueror as Time seems the conqueror in the poem.

The next step in all of this would seem to be: read the poem. And so here it is, a sonnet:

The Conqueror
By Adrian Pordelorrar 

Dark, even in the sunset's crimson glare,
     There grows, unknown, an ancient forest grove; --
A voice of myst'ry murmurs in its air
     Where Night for centuries has whispered love!
Dim mirrored in a crystal pool, found there,
     Lie strange, forgotten worlds, and things, whereof
One dares not dream. Dark eyes, through matted hair,
     Laugh from its depths, to mock at Life above.

Soft words, from unseen lips, make known their thought--
     The uselessness of lab'ring through the years,
While worlds and men and kingdoms they have wrought,
     Their efforts, and their loves, and secret fears,
Crumble before the sweep of Time, as nought,
     Despite their anguish, and unnoticed tears!

If -lorrar is a play on llorar, referring to crying, and Adrian refers to water also, then the imagery of crying and water in the name of the pseudonymous poet is also in the poem.

We will probably never know who was the author of "The Conqueror," but why not consider Farnsworth Wright as a possibility?

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Lady Anne Bonny (Dates Unknown)

Lady Anne Bonny was the pen name of an unknown author. She had just one story in Weird Tales, a three-part serial called "Wings of Power," published in the issues of January, February, and March of 1925. "Wings of Power" is called a "Pseudo-Scientific Novel" in the table of contents. The pseudonym of the author and the title of the story would seem incongruous, for Anne Bonny was a real person, a lady pirate, active for just a few short months in 1720 when there was no such thing as a "pseudo-scientific story," and almost no science at all. No one knows when or where she was born, nor when or where she died. Lady Anne Bonny the author is unknown, and her namesake lady pirate is very nearly unknown.

"Wings of Power" is a long, melodramatic story with a very full cast of characters. There is a mad-scientist type, Professor Kurt Maquarri, and a damsel in distress, his step-daughter Joan Suffern, who does a lot of sufferin'. The science is nonsense, but pseudoscientific nonsense in a story can be fun sometimes. You just have to give up your knowledge of real science and go along for the ride. I wrote that the author's name and the title of her story would seem incongruous, but the pirate Blackbeard figures in it, though not very prominently. I haven't read the story, only breezed through it, looking for clues as to the author's identity. I didn't find anything conclusive. I also read "The Eyrie" for the months after "Wings of Power" was published. I didn't see any mention of it. I take that to mean that, although no one hated it, also no one loved it. Lady Anne Bonny seems to have come and gone. Did she ever write under her own name?

There's just one thing: in the same issues in which "Wings of Power" was published, there were illustrations by an artist named Jessie Bond, who sometimes used "Bonny" as her nickname, who was also a writer, and who was drawn to the subtropics of Florida and the Bahamas. Anne Bonny the pirate got her start by stealing a ship in the Bahamas. So could Jessie Bond, aka Bonny Bond, have been Lady Anne Bonny? Could she have written in collaboration with someone else, such as Farnsworth Wright?

The heading for part one of "Wings of Power" by Lady Anne Bonny, Weird Tales, January 1925, illustration by Andrew Brosnatch.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Francis Hard (1888-1940)

Pseudonym of Farnsworth Wright
Author, Editor, Poet, Journalist, Translator, Soldier
Born July 29, 1888, Santa Barbara, California
Died June 12, 1940, Manhattan, New York, New York

Francis Hard was Farnsworth Wright. He used that pseudonym while writing stories and poems for magazines of which he was the editor. You could call it a conflict of interest for an editor to place his own works in a publication that he edits. I don't see it that way. An editor should have someone else look at his story or poem before putting it into print. He should also accept "No" or "It needs work" in response. But I think it's okay for an editor to publish his own work, even under his own name. Farnsworth Wright wrote as Francis Hard anyway.

Farnsworth Wright was born on July 29, 1888, in Santa Barbara, California, to George Francis Wright (1848-1892), a civil engineer and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and Genevieve Hard Wright (1850-1914), a soprano singer and music teacher and an instructor in physical culture. And so already we have an origin for Wright's nom de plume, Francis Hard.

According to his World War I draft card, Farnsworth Wright attended the University of Nevada, where he began his military service. Wright also studied journalism at the University of Washington. (See his yearbook picture below.) His father had served before him in the U.S. Navy. They were descended from Samuel Farnsworth of Groton, Massachusetts, a drummer in Captain Joseph Moor's Company, Colonel William Prescott's Regiment of Massachusetts Militia during the Revolutionary War. Samuel Farnsworth enlisted on May 15, 1775, or less than a month after the war had commenced at Lexington and Concord. He was presumably at the Battle of Bunker Hill less than a month later. On November 9, 1910, the Colorado Society of the Sons of the American Revolution approved Farnsworth Wright's application for membership. Less than eight years later, on September 9, 1918, Private Farnsworth Wright of Company H, 342nd Infantry Regiment, 86th Infantry Division--the Blackhawk Division--shipped out from New York to France aboard the Minnekahda, continuing the Farnsworth and Wright families' records of service to their country.

Wright returned to the United States on August 4, 1919. He had been promoted by then to sergeant. During and after the Great War, Wright had served as a translator in France and I believe in occupied Germany. Before, based in Chicago, he had worked as a newspaper reporter for Musical America Company of New York. He was also, oddly enough, an Esperantist. Music, languages, and culture seem to have come naturally to members of the Wright family.

Farnsworth Wright returned stateside in the same year that Jacob C. Henneberger, late of the U.S. Navy, arrived in Indianapolis. Henneberger also had connections in Chicago. In 1922 (or thereabouts), he formed The Rural Publishing Corporation with a former college classmate, John M. Lansinger. In one way or another, Farnsworth Wright met Henneberger and Lansinger. Wright had a short story, "The Closing Hand," in the first issue of their new magazine, Weird Tales, in March 1923. He had other submissions after that and began working as a reader of manuscripts at some point. Weird Tales and the business behind it foundered in mid-1924. When it came back in November of that year, Farnsworth Wright was full editor. It was then that he began using the name Francis Hard. As Hard, he had five poems and a short story in Weird Tales, plus one story each in it companion titles Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine, which were really the same magazine with successively different titles.

Francis Hard's career as an author and a poet lasted almost as long as Farnsworth Wright's did as editor. Wright remained in his post until 1940, the year in which he died at age fifty-one. He was buried at Willamette National Cemetery in Oregon. His widow, Marjorie Jeanette Zinkie Wright (1893-1974), joined him there the year after her death.

Francis Hard's Stories & Poems in Weird Tales, Oriental Stories, and The Magic Carpet Magazine
(All were in Weird Tales unless otherwise noted.)
"The Great Panjandrum" (short story; Nov. 1924)
"Two Crows" (poem; Jan. 1925)
"The Dark Pool" (poem; Apr. 1925)
"The Death Angel" (poem; Sept. 1925)
"The Evening Star" (poem; Mar. 1926)
"The White Queen" in Oriental Stories (short story; Nov. 1930)
"The Picture of Judas" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (short story; Apr. 1933)
"After Two Nights of the Ear-Ache" (poem; Oct. 1937)

Above, the University of Washington yearbook pictures of Farnsworth Wright (1888-1940) and his future wife, Marjorie Zinkie (1893-1974), from the 1913-1914 school year. Marjorie Zinkie studied to be a librarian and worked in that capacity in Idaho, Michigan, and Washington State. Together the Wrights had a son, Robert Farnsworth Wright (1930-1993). He and his wife, Ruthora Marie McBride Wright (1930-1993), died within five months of each other in 1993. I can't say whether Farnsworth and Marjorie Wright have any living descendants.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Mary Sharon (1895-1962)

Pseudonym of Henrietta Prouty aka Henrietta Trefon
Author, Poet, Freelance Writer
Born December 29, 1895, Galena, Kansas
Died December 21, 1962, Los Angeles city or county, California

Mary Sharon was the pseudonym of Henrietta Prouty, who was born on December 29, 1895, in Galena, Kansas. Her parents were William Harrison Prouty, a mineworker, and Evalina Melvina "Dolly" (Maitland) Prouty. If I have counted correctly, there were eight Prouty children in all, seven girls and a boy. One of the daughters died on the day she was born.

In reading about Henrietta Prouty and her husband in contemporaneous newspaper accounts, you start to wonder what was true about them and what was mere fancy. Or maybe I should say that you start to realize how little seems to have been true and how much was very likely made up. Did she really know Douglas Fairbanks? Was she really a film actress? Did she really write scenarios and form her own movie production company during the early 1920s? I don't think anyone can say.

And then you run upon a fact:

On May 31, 1919, Henrietta Prouty married a man named Van Simon Trefon (1886-1971) in Los Angeles, California. He was supposed to have been French. In actuality, he was a native of Salonika, Greece. Maybe he was a Frenchman born in Greece.

Then the questions begin again. Did Trefon really arrive in America while working for the Pathé film company? Was he really a stage and movie actor who performed with Madame Petrova, Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, and Broncho Billy Anderson? Was he really a linguist, possessing a mastery of ten languages and attaining the rank of captain in the U.S. Army while working in the foreign secret service? Again, I don't think anyone can say.

Neither Mary Sharon nor Van S. Trefon is in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). That may not mean a lot. There are probably myriads of films, actors, directors, photographers, and so on not listed there. Besides that, IMDb has a screwy new format. You can't be sure of finding anything. Mary Sharon or Henrietta Trefon is supposed to have written the scenario for a movie called The Redemption of John Williams in which she was to have played the female lead and her husband was to have been "the heavy lead." Directed by Hoddy Milligan and produced by Ozark Film Company, the movie was shot, in part, in Galena in 1921. Hundreds of people were supposed to have witnessed all of that, but did it really happen? Maybe. Probably. Karl Hoddy Milligan (1881-1951) was a real person. He's listed as a maker of local movies in Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States by Martin L. Johnson (2018). Maybe The Redemption of John Williams is hiding in its pages under a different title. Maybe Desert Lure, also shot by Ozark Film Company in Galena, also with Van S. Trefon in the heavy lead, is there, too. Or maybe all of these things--all of the films and all of the facts behind them--are now lost.

A newspaper item from 1923 is more down to earth. It announced that Trefon and his wife were establishing an office in Galena for showing slide shows of comic moving pictures. This was to have been in outdoor venues in the city. Enumerated in the 1925 Kansas state census in Galena, Trefon called himself a film photographer. The couple had three young daughters at the time, a pair of twins aged four and a seven-month-old baby. Trefon's name showed up again in newspaper articles of the 1930s when he was a cameraman and independent film producer. Using the stage name Barbara Sharon, his youngest daughter was supposed to have been in the Our Gang comedies.

The Trefons were divorced on November 17, 1934. Nonetheless, Henrietta continued to use her husband's surname as her own. She lived in Culver City, California, as of April 1, 1935. In 1940, calling herself a freelance writer, she was lodging in Los Angeles with her daughters, Marjorie Derelys, aged fifteen, and Barbara Dolores, aged twelve. I don't know where her other two daughters, the twins Lorraine Erma and Maureen Mary, were at the time. If they weren't already married, they soon would be.

In 1945, Henrietta renounced any allegiance to a foreign country and was repatriated as an American citizen despite never having lived abroad. She may have been required to do this because of her marriage to a foreign national. She gave her occupation at the time as "free lance news and magazine feature writer."

In 1950, Henrietta was in Los Angeles and living with her daughter Lorraine Lawrence and Lorraine's two daughters. There had been some drama a few years before involving another of her daughters, Barbara McGlynn. At holiday time 1946, Barbara, separated from her husband and facing eviction from her tiny apartment, drank caustic poison. Fortunately for herself and her baby daughter, she only suffered a burned mouth. Unfortunately she was unable to avoid eviction.

Henrietta Prouty Trefon, aka Mary Sharon, died on December 21, 1962, in Los Angeles city or county, California. She was only a few days short of her sixty-seventh birthday. Tragedy struck a little more than a month later, on January 23, 1963, when her daughter, Barbara Dolores "Bobby" Trefon Eaton and Barbara's four-year-old son died in a house fire. Two of Henrietta's other daughters, Maureen and Marjorie, were blessed with very long lives. I don't know what happened to Lorraine, but I hope she enjoyed a long life, too.

Mary Sharon's Letter, Poem, & Stories in Weird Tales
Letter to "The Eyrie" (written from Galena, Kansas) (June 1923)
"The Ghost" (poem, Feb. 1924)
"The Door of Doom" (Feb. 1924)
"The Cat of Chiltern Castle" (Sept. 1926)

Further Reading

Many newspaper articles on her, her husband, and family from the 1920s through the 1940s.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Bert David Ross (1888-1947)

Pseudonym of Gilbert C. Ross
Aka G.C. Ross
Office Worker, Insurance Salesman, Gardener, Author, Teacher
Born March 8, 1888, Red Oak, Iowa
Died March 30, 1947, Santa Clara city or county, California

Bert David Ross was the pseudonym of Gilbert C. Ross, who also went by his initials as G.C. Ross. Ross was born on March 8, 1888, in Red Oak, Iowa. I haven't found anything on his early life, but on March 15, 1925, Ross married Della Rose Brown in Seattle, Washington. The couple had two daughters, Rose Alyce Ross and Star Aileen Ross.

As of 1928, Ross was working as office manager at Acme Engraving, Seattle, Washington. In 1930, he was an insurance salesman. Ten years later, he was a gardener for a private family in the Seattle area. In 1942, when he filled out his draft card, Ross was living at Deer Harbor on San Juan Island, Washington, and working for Davis Investment Co. Finally, in 1944, he was an office worker at Bremerton Navy Yard. It was at around this time that Ross' professional writing career began. He had a story called "Scandia Reef" in Short Stories, June 25, 1944. "Overflow," in Short Stories for October 25, 1944, is set on San Juan Island, Ross' former home.

On the strength of those successes and a couple of more from early 1945, Ross, with his associates, formed the Writer's Club of Bremerton in late April 1945. Ross served as the first president, while Edward Stevenson was vice-president, Mrs. Lucille E. Doty was secretary, and Alice Smock was treasurer. According to an article from September 25, 1945, other members of the Bremerton Writers Club and their guests included: Mildred Dunn, Eddie Hammond, Muriel Innes, Jane Kent, Mr. & Mrs. Harvey Leach, Bernice McFarland, Ivy Pelky, Louise Pelky, Seaman 1st Class Larry Richardson, and Dr. & Mrs. Savage. More articles give the names of more members during the 1940s through the 1960s: Clyde Clark, Henry Clarke, Valentine Dmetriev, Mr. & Mrs. Lynn Jensen, Muriel McConnell, Margaret Metcalfe, Marian Reid, Margaret Rice, and Myrtle Tennis.

As of 1946, Ross was a teacher of creative writing in night school classes conducted at Bremerton High School. His older daughter was in high school, the younger in grade school. Later in the year, Ross and his family moved either to San Luis Obispo or San Simeon, California. G.C. Ross died in Santa Clara city or county, California, on March 30, 1947, and so his writing career that had begun three years before came to a sudden end. He had just turned fifty-nine years old. 

If the information in The FictionMags Index is accurate (I always assume that it is), then Ross' career in writing for story magazines lasted just over three years, from June 1944 to November 1947. He had two stories in Weird Tales and eight in Short Stories. Both titles were owned at the time by Short Stories, Inc., of New York City, and both had Dorothy McIlwraith as their editor.

Bert David Ross' Stories in Weird Tales & Short Stories

• "Scandia Reef" in Short Stories (June 25, 1944)
• "Overflow" in Short Stories (Oct. 25, 1944)
• "Luck Plus X" in Short Stories (Feb. 25, 1945)
• "Old Black Magic" in Short Stories (May 10, 1945)
• "Plane Paradise" in Short Stories (Mar. 10, 1946)
• "'Discovery 2nd'" in Short Stories (Apr. 25, 1946)
• "Not Human" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1946)
• "Peek and the Blackfish" in Short Stories (Jan. 25, 1947)
• "Trip to Monterey" in Short Stories (Mar. 25, 1947)
• "The Last Adam and Eve" in Weird Tales (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

• "Invite Membership in Writers Club" in Kitsap Sun (Washington), May 1, 1945, page 4.
• "Personal Portraits" by Vera Pumphrey in Kitsap Sun (Washington), March 2, 1946, page 3.

An illustration for "The Last Adam and Eve" by Bert David Ross, drawn by Boris Dolgov and published in Weird Tales, November 1947.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Minna Irving (1864-1940)

Aka Minnie Irving

Pseudonym of Minnie Odell
Aka Mrs. Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater, Mrs. Harry Michener, Aurelia Maxwell Michener

Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Journalist, Author
Born May 17, 1864, Tarrytown, New York
Died July 23, 1940, Christian Sanitarium, Wyckoff, New Jersey

Known over the course of her long life and career as Minna Irving, poet and author Minnie Odell was born on May 17, 1864, in Tarrytown, New York. Her parents were William Roamer Odell (1840-?), a carpenter, and Mary Ann (Van Tassel) Odell (1842-1926), a near lifelong companion to her. Minnie started writing poems and songs at a young age. Counted in the 1880 census as "Minnie I. Odell," she gave her occupation, at age seventeen, as "authoress." The "Irving" part of her name seems to have been an invention, no doubt assumed for its association with a local luminary. After all, Tarrytown is and was famous as the home of Washington Irving (1783-1859), who died just five years before Minnie Odell was born. "Minna" was supposed to have been suggested by an editor at The Century close to the outset of her career. (1)

Now none of that is to say that Minna Irving was not connected somehow to Washington Irving. Here is an excerpt from a feature article from 1962:

On March 20, 1800, [Joseph Cutler] purchased from Dr. Mordecai Hale the 165-acres John Van Tassel farm on the east side of Broadway in Tarrytown. On the property was kept prior to and during the Revolution as a tavern. It later became known as the Jacob Mott House. (2) [Boldface added.]

The house is gone now, but the surname Van Tassel will live on in that of Katrina Van Tassel, love interest of Washington Irving's hero Ichabod Crane. I can't be sure, but I believe that the previous owner of the Jacob Mott House was the same John Van Tassel (?-1813) who was also Minna Irving's maternal grandfather. So maybe if there was a connection, it was her on mother's side. One of Minna Irving's early works was "Folk Lore Tales of Sleepy Hollow," from 1885 or before.

The FictionMags Index has a long, long list of Minna Irving's credits. They begin with these four poems:

• "Bayard Taylor: in Memoriam" in Peterson’s Magazine (Feb. 1880)
• "Westminster Abbey" in Peterson’s Magazine (Sept. 1880)
• "Shakspere" in Scribner’s Monthly (Dec. 1880)
• "Dean Stanley: Obit 1881" Peterson’s Magazine (Jan. 1882) (3)

Her poem "The Haunted Heart," published in The Century in December 1885, became the title piece of a collection, Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). Minna Irving had scores more poems, stories, and other pieces in Ainslee's Magazine, The Century, The Gray Goose, Lippincott's, Munsey's, New York Herald, Peterson's, The Smart Set, and other titles from 1882 to 1937.

Minna's last dated piece in The FictionMags Index was also her only poem in Weird Tales, "Sea-Wind," from August 1937. She contributed to other pulp magazines, too, including All-Story Love Stories, Argosy All-Story Weekly, Breezy Stories, and, oddly enough, Amazing Stories. Here are all of the poems and a story by Minna Irving listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb):

• "The Witches" (poem) (1890)
• "The Violet Immortal" (poem) in Putnam’s Monthly and The Critic (Oct. 1906)
• "The Spirit-Boats" (poem) in Argosy All-Story Weekly (Apr. 14, 1923); reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1939) and Famous Fantastic Mysteries (Dec. 1951)
• "The Return" (poem) in The Haunted Hour, edited by Margaret Widdemer (Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920)
• "The Moon Woman" (short story) in Amazing Stories (Nov. 1929)
• "Sea-Wind" (poem) in Weird Tales (Aug. 1937)

A look at The FictionMags Index will show some other titles that sound like they could also be for genre works.

Under her married name, Mrs. Harry Michener or Aurelia Maxwell Michener, Minna had poems published in magazines of the Great American West:

• "The Cattleman's Choice" (poem) in Sunset: The Pacific Monthly (Aug. 1913)
• "At the Rancho Gonzales" (poem) in Overland Monthly (Feb. 1914)
•  "The Cameo" (poem) in Overland Monthly (June 1914)

Minna Irving was married and divorced twice. First came Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater (1870-1953), with whom she tied the knot on October 18, 1889, while he was on leave from West Point. October 18 was a Friday. While on a camping trip, the young couple were told by a Gypsy fortuneteller that to be married on a Friday is to bring bad luck, so they married again on July 5, 1890, in Peekskill, New York. The bad luck came anyway, so bad that after they separated, Minna bought a revolver to protect herself from De Lamater.

They divorced in 1911. Her second husband was Harry Heber Michener (1873-1949), a native Hoosier, later of California. He was a mine owner and race car driver and "generally conceded to be one of the most daring men of the country." (4) He would have to be if he was going to woo and wed Minna Irving, that "Sweet Singer of Sleepy Hollow," for she had been involved in scandals, lawsuits, and all kinds of tussles--though maybe mostly in her youth. Regarding one disagreement from 1894, editor M.D. Raymond of the Tarrytown Argus said in exasperation, "Don't mention the name of Minna Irving to me again." (5)

Minna Irving worked on the editorial staff of the New York Herald. In 1899, she received a gold medal for her poem on the sinking of the Maine. In 1923, the French government commissioned her to compose a poem to be engraved on a plaque on the grave of Quentin Roosevelt (1897-1918). She went on to write poems even into the last decade of her life. Minna Irving died on July 23, 1940, at Christian Sanitarium in Wyckoff, New Jersey.

Minna Irving's Poem in Weird Tales

"Sea-Wind" (Aug. 1937)

Further Reading

There are hundreds of newspaper articles on Minna Irving, including an obituary in the New York Times, dated July 7, 1940.

Notes

(1) See "On the War Path" in Yonkers Statesman (Yonkers, New York), December 1, 1885, page 3.

(2) From The Daily Times, Mamaroneck, New York, August 2, 1962, page 12.

(3) Dean Stanley was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881).

(4) According to the Times-Democrat of New Orleans, in an article of January 17, 1909, page 27.

(5) "Minna Irving Upholds History" in the New York Sun, October 9, 1894, page 6.

Minna Irving (1864-1940), a photographic portrait from her book Songs of a Haunted Heart (1888). I have cropped this picture and have recolored it in order to tone down a moiré effect from a digital scan of the original. 

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

George Whitley aka A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)

Arthur Bertram Chandler
Aka Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M., George Whitely, George Whitley
Author, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Merchant Mariner
Born March 28, 1912, Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Died June 6, 1984, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I thought I had covered most of the authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in previous articles, but then I find that the author called George Whitley was actually the well known Anglo-Australian author A. Bertram Chandler. I suppose I'll keep making these discoveries until I have written about all of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales.

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born on March 28, 1912, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He served in the merchant marine in his native country and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1956 after the breakup of his first marriage. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his earliest science fiction story was "'This Means War!'" in Astounding Science Fiction for May 1944. His first and only story for Weird Tales was "Castaway" from November 1947, published under the byline of George Whitley. Chandler was a very prolific author. Much of his fiction has to do with life aboard ship.

You can read about A. Bertram Chandler at various websites. Just one more fact before the facts of his death: Chandler's daughter Jenny is married to Ramsey Campbell, who has also contributed to Weird Tales.

A. Bertram Chandler died on June 6, 1984, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was seventy-two years old.

George Whitley's Story in Weird Tales

"Castway" (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

Besides Wikipedia, see the following sources (and embedded links found therein):

A. Bertram Chandler

AustLit

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, July 1946, the British edition with "Special Knowledge" by A. Bertram Chandler as the cover story. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Cosmo #170, a complete science fiction novel (or, in the Italian, "i romanzi del fantascienza") by Chandler, from June 1965. The Italian title is Nelle Immense, Profondita Spaziall, in English, The Deep Reaches of Space. Cover art by Luigi Garonzi.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Binny Koras, "The Gypsy Poet" (ca. 1895-?)

Pseudonym of Alexander Rice
Psychiatric Nurse, Journalist, Teacher, YMCA Director, Public Speaker, Artist, Poet, Translator, Occultist
Born ca. 1895
Died ?

Updated on November 13, 2018

Binny Koras, known as "the Gypsy poet," was the pseudonym of a man named Alexander Rice. Rice was born in about 1895. According to a newspaper article from 1922: 

[He] grew up on the highways and byways of middle America, lived in Australia for several years, served during the war as a psychiatric nurse and since returning to the United States in 1919 has been engaged in newspaper writing, teaching and work with boys. A student of oriental languages, he has translated verses from the Japanese, Arabic, and Urdu. (1)

Alexander Rice was managing editor of the Davenport (Iowa) Tribune and a boys' secretary and director of the YMCA in Davenport. He also taught vocational school for ex-servicemen after the war. In 1922, he got a job with Neuhaus and Son of St. Louis to take paintings by important American artists on the road for exhibition. Rice, who was an artist himself, would also give lectures on these paintings.

As Binny Koras, Rice had poems in Dial, Nation, Pagan, Pearson's, Shadowland, and Survey. His poem "Growing Up," originally in the Rock Island Argus (Illinois) and reprinted in The Literary Digest, The Bookman, and Anthology of Newspaper Verse for 1921, was called by the same article "perhaps the most widely printed verse of 1921." He had one poem in Weird Tales, "For Clytie," in the issue for November 1926.

Oddly enough, Koras was also an occultist and was listed in Who's Who in Occultism, New Thought, Psychism and Spiritualism, compiled and edited by William C. Hartmann, and published in 1927 by The Occult Press of Jamaica, New York. Here is the entry on Koras in its entirety:

SEVENTAN FELLOWSHIP. Based on the Book of Seveta (Arabic, Seventh Century, A.D.). Missionary for North America, Binny Koras, A.M., Ph.D.

He was evidently involved in socialist causes, too, which are, as we now know, just another form of superstition or occult activity.

Binny Koras submitted his verse to newspapers from addresses in Davenport, Iowa; Mattoon, Illinois; and St. Paul, Minnesota. His nickname, "the Gypsy poet," may have come from his wandering ways, but he also claimed Romany ancestry. Unfortunately I have not been able to find out anything more on Alexander Rice or Binny Koras, including his dates and places of birth and death.

Binny Koras' Poem in Weird Tales
"For Clytie" (Nov. 1926)

Further Reading

• "Alexander Rice Gains Fame for Writing a Poem." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Oct. 8, 1921, p. 4.
• "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.
• [Item.] The Dispatch (Moline, IL), July 22, 1922, p. 4.
• "Alexander Rice in Charge of Art Exhibit on Tour." The Daily Times (Davenport, IA), Aug. 16, 1922, p. 7.

Note

(1) "'Jedediah Tingle' and an Iowa Pet" by Agnes Barton. Des Moines (IA) Register, May 14, 1922, p. 31.

Here are some poems by Binny Koras, perhaps his complete poems extant:

Growing Up
by Binny Koras (1921)

Gee! But I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to put on longies 
And smoke cigars, 
And be a man 
With a pay-day on Saturday. 
I wanted to grow up 
And have somebody to buy sodas for,
And take to the circus 
Once in a while. 

We all did, then: 
Pat, who could throw any kid in town, 
And Don, who went to the Advent church. 
And said the world was coming to an end 
In Nineteen-hundred, 
And Brick Top and Eppie and Skin and Spider.

We all wanted to grow up 
And become pirates and millionaires and 
Soldiers and Presidents and 
Owners of candy stores. 
And all the time we were eating home-cooking 
And wearing holes in our pants, 
And talking Hog-Latin 
And doing what two fingers in the air 
Stood for;
And saving stamps. 
And making things we read about 
In The Boys' World. 
Do you know how to play mumble-de-peg, 
And skim rocks, 
And tread water, 
And skin the cat? 
Do you know what a stick on the shoulder stands for 
And what "Commggery, wiggery, meggery" means? 

Skin is running a wheat farm, now,
Up in North Dakota. 
Pat is on the road 
Selling something or other. 
Brick Top never grew up, quite, 
And was making darts for a kid of his own 
When I saw him last. 
And Spider is yelling his head off 
About Socialism and the class struggle 
On street corners. 

Don was with the Rainbow Division when the world ended. 

Yesterday I heard a little freckle-face 
Whistle through his fingers 
And tell a feller called Curley 
What he was going to do when he grew up. 

* * *

"Smoke" from 1922, "Evolution" from 1927, and "To One Departed" from 1922.

Original text 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley