Background
Paul E. More was born on December 12, 1864, in St. Louis City, Missouri, the third son and seventh of eight children of Enoch Anson More, Sr. and Katharine Hay Elmer, both of sturdy colonial stock. His two older brothers, Enoch Anson and Brookes, achieved recognition as writers; his younger brother, Louis Trenchard, a physicist of broad philosophical interests, was for many years dean of the graduate school at the University of Cincinnati.
More's father, who had been a brigadier general on the Union side in the Civil War, engaged after the war in various businesses including book-selling, but the literary tastes of More and his brothers appear to have been derived mainly from their mother.