When Richter was nine, his father belatedly decided to enter the ministry. Richter was himself intended for the ministry but, rejecting orthodox Christianity, declined a scholarship that would have provided him a college education. Instead, after graduating from high school at fifteen, he took on several laborious jobs, including, according to his daughter, Harvena Richter, in
Writing to Survive: The Private Notebooks of Conrad Richter (1988), "stone breaking, culm shoveling, breaker machine carrying, and work in a damp, dark Pittsburgh machine shop," the last of which he quit when he suffered a nervous breakdown. When he was twenty he discovered journalism and did his first serious writing as a correspondent, editor, and reporter for newspapers in Patton, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Other jobs he held in those years included private secretary, business manager, mine examiner, and publisher of pamphlets and a children's magazine.
Richter sold his first story, "How Tuck Went Home," to Cavalier in 1913; his "Brothers of No Kin" appeared in Forum in 1914 and was selected for The Best Short Stories of 1915, edited by Edward J. O'Brien. He married Harvena Maria Achenbach on 24 March 1915. Their only child, Harvena, was born on 13 March 1917.
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