P. Truman Henson (aka Trafton Dent) was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1898. The son of a Baptist Minister, he was raised principally in Providence, Rhode Island. He served in the army during World War I, and graduated from Colgate University in 1920 and from Harvard Law School in 1923. He was a successful tax attorney and an avid outdoorsman whose hobbies included hunting, shooting, sailing, and nature photography. He wrote two non-fiction works,
Sporting Rifles and Scope Sights
(1950) and
Binoculars, Telescopes and Telescopic Sights
(1955). He traveled to Newfoundland to hunt on at least eight different occasions from 1949 through the early 1960's. He died peacefully in 1968 and is buried in the Henson family plot in Orleans, Massachusetts.