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John Wentworth (governor)
Encyclopedia
Sir John Wentworth, 1st Baronet (9 August 1737 – 8 April 1820) was the British
colonial governor of New Hampshire
at the time of the American Revolution
. He was later also Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia
.
on August 9, 1737. His ancestry went back to some of the earliest settlers of the Province of New Hampshire
, and he was grandson of John Wentworth
, who served as the province's lieutenant governor in the 1720s, and nephew to Governor Benning Wentworth
His father Mark was a major landowner and merchant in the province, and his mother, Elizabeth Rindge Wentworth, was also from the upper echelons of New Hampshire society. In 1751 he enrolled in Harvard College
, receiving a BA in 1755 and an MA in 1758. During his time at Harvard, he was a classmate and became a close friend of future Founding Father and President of the United States John Adams
.
In 1759 the young Wentworth made his first significant investment, joining a partnership in the purchase and development of land in the Lake Winnipesaukee
area. Wentworth sat on a committee of partners that oversaw the settlement of the community, which the investors named Wolfeboro
. In 1763 his father sent him to London
to act on behalf of his merchant interests. Based on his father's introductions, he was soon mingling with the upper levels of British society. Among the connections he made was one with the Marquess of Rockingham
, a distant relative (although neither was apparently aware of this) and a leading Whig
politician. In 1765 Wentworth, still in London, was appointed by the province as one of its agents. That same year Rockingham became Prime Minister and led the repeal of the hated Stamp Act
. Whether Wentworth influenced Rockingham's decision is uncertain, but New Hampshire's other agent, Barlow Trecothick, drafted with Rockingham a position paper on the matter, and Wentworth was clearly sympathetic to colonial opposition to the Stamp Act.
Wentworth's uncle Benning had spent many years of his governorship lining his pockets by selling land grants
to the west of the Connecticut River
, territory to which the province held dubious claim. In 1764 the Lords of Trade ruled that New Hampshire's western border was at the Connecticut River, decisively awarding the territory (the future state of Vermont
) to the Province of New York
. The governor, however, refused to resign, leading the Lords of Trade to consider his recall. Wentworth interceded, and convinced them to allow his uncle the dignity of resigning in his nephew's favor.
In August 1766 he was commissioned as Governor and vice admiral of New Hampshire, and surveyor general of the woods in North America. Before he returned to North America he was awarded a Doctorate of Common Law by Oxford University. After a difficult crossing he arrived at Charleston, South Carolina
in March 1767, where he proceeded to make the first major survey of the forests of Georgia and the Carolinas on behalf of the crown. He then made his way north overland, and was received in Portsmouth with pomp and ceremony on June 13, 1767.
), but also name Strafford County
after one of his distant relatives, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford
.
He also began the process of developing roads between the major population centers of the province, which had grown around the coast and the Merrimack
and Connecticut Rivers. Although the provincial assembly was reluctant to fund new roads, Wentworth used quitrents collected on recently-issued land grants to pay for the work. In 1771 he reported having constructed more than 200 miles of roads at a cost of £500. The same year he convinced the assembly to appropriate £100 for surveyor Samuel Holland
to produce the first detailed high quality map of the province.
Wentworth was ironically responsible for significant improvements to the provincial militia organization. When he arrived the militia consisted of about 10,000 men, who were by his report "badly accoutred and scarcely at all disciplined". He expanded the militia, adding 1,600 men and three regiments to the force, and regularly attended regimental reviews.
Although Wentworth was successful in keeping New Hampshire from implementing harsh boycotts in response to the Townshend Acts
, he was clearly troubled by both colonial resistance to Parliamentary acts and by the introduction of troops into Boston
in 1768. He wrote to Rockingham that the troop movement was likely to be problematic, and the government and other reforms were more likely to succeed. New Hampshire businessmen were eventually pressured into adopting a boycott of British goods when Massachusetts businessmen threaten to suspend trade with them.
After the Boston Tea Party
in late 1773 further inflamed tensions in New England, Wentworth successfully defused the threat of similar action in Portsmouth. After issuing careful instructions to the master of a ship arriving with a consignment of tea, Wentworth departed Portsmouth for Dover
. During his absence the tea was landed and stored in the Portsmouth customs house. This removed the possibility of the tea being dumped as it had been in Boston, but the townspeople were still opposed to its presence. A committee of Portsmouth merchants negotiated its safe passage to Halifax, Nova Scotia
, and the tea was safely transported through the town and reembarked on a ship.
Wentworth's popularity in the province began to fall as tensions continued to rise in neighboring Massachusetts. When the Boston port was closed
as punishment for the Tea Party, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage
found it increasingly difficult to find workers willing to support the military (despite rampant unemployment caused by the port closure). He therefore asked Wentworth to assist in the procurement of carpenters in New Hampshire to build barracks for the troops. When his secretive methods to do so were exposed and publicized, local revolutionary committees denounced him as an "enemy to the community". Although he intuited that the arrival of Paul Revere
on December 13, 1774 was likely to cause trouble, he was unable to prevent the local militia, now effectively under control of the revolutionary committees, from marching on Fort William and Mary the next day and seizing the provincial armaments and gunpowder. Wentworth had warned the garrison before the event, and called for naval support afterward, but it arrived too late to be use.
He eventually asked for further reinforcements but received none, and realized that any attempt to arrest the ringleaders of the rebellion would likely result in an uprising. He organized a small force of trusted men to act as guards of his person and property, and during early 1775 pressure on the province's Loyalist
s was prompting some of them to flee to the safety of the British Army presence in Boston. Despite the opening of hostilities with the Battles of Lexington and Concord
on April 19 (after which numerous New Hampshire militia went south to join the Siege of Boston
), Wentworth convened the provincial assembly in late May. Composed primarily of rebel sympathizers, it refused to consider the Conciliatory Resolution
proposed by Prime Minister Lord North
to defuse the crisis. Wentworth therefore prorogued the assembly, hoping that a delay would favorably change the atmosphere. It did not: on May 30, rebel militia began occupying and fortifying Portsmouth. Captain Andrew Barkley of the HMS Scarborough further exacerbated tensions by impressing
local fishermen and seizing supplies for use by the troops in Boston. Wentworth managed to defuse the situation by convincing Barkley to release to fishermen.
On June 13, 1775, after his house was surrounded by a mob of armed men seeking to arrest a Loyalist militia officer, Wentworth and his family fled to Fort William and Mary, which was under the guns of the Scarborough. Conditions continued to deteriorate, and Wentworth boarded the Scarborough and sailed for Boston on August 23. After sending his family to England, he remained in the city until it was evacuated to Halifax in March 1776. He remained with the fleet until New York City
was captured in September 1776, and finally sailed to England in early 1778. The New Hampshire government established after his departure seized most of his property, but specially reserved to the family portraits and furniture from the Portsmouth mansion.
from January 23, 1792 to 1808.
He stabilized the colony's finances, tried to settle free blacks who came as Loyalists (they were finally resettled in Sierra Leone
), and quieted the Indians. Responding to the war with France that began in 1793, he cracked down on internal dissent, especially of the democratic sort voiced by the Yankees. His feuds with the informal leader of the country party, William Cottnam Tonge escalated into a constitutional struggle between the governor-in-council and the House of Assembly, controlled by Tonge. Wentworth, steeped in corruption and nepotism (which is how he became a governor in the first place), assisted the Halifax merchants but neglected everyone else. London removed the reactionary governor in 1808 and replaced him with George Prevost.
While governor he raised the Nova Scotia Regiment and became its first colonel. Wentworth was knighted and awarded a baronetcy
in 1795. He also served as Grand Master of the Free Masons. He retired as governor of Nova Scotia in 1808 on a pension of 6500 dollars.
, Deering
and Wentworth
. She died at Sunninghill, Berkshire
, England, February 14, 1813, aged 68. Wentworth died at Halifax, Nova Scotia
, on April 8, 1820, aged 84. He was buried in St. Paul's Church
, where a tablet exists to his memory. The couple had one son, Charles Mary Wentworth, who succeeded to the baronetcy. The son, who served as a councilor in Nova Scotia, died without issue in 1844, extinguishing the baronetcy.
The Governor's Lady, by Thomas H. Raddall, is a novel based on his life.
Kingdom of Great Britain
The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...
colonial governor of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
at the time of the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
. He was later also Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
.
Early life
Wentworth was born in Portsmouth, New HampshirePortsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the largest city but only the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 21,233 at the 2010 census...
on August 9, 1737. His ancestry went back to some of the earliest settlers of the Province of New Hampshire
Province of New Hampshire
The Province of New Hampshire is a name first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization...
, and he was grandson of John Wentworth
John Wentworth (Lieutenant-Governor)
John Wentworth served as Lieutenant Governor for the Province of New Hampshire from 1717 to 1730.-Biography:...
, who served as the province's lieutenant governor in the 1720s, and nephew to Governor Benning Wentworth
Benning Wentworth
Benning Wentworth was the colonial governor of New Hampshire from 1741 to 1766.-Biography:The eldest child of the John Wentworth who had been Lieutenant Governor, he was born and died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Wentworth graduated from Harvard College in 1715...
His father Mark was a major landowner and merchant in the province, and his mother, Elizabeth Rindge Wentworth, was also from the upper echelons of New Hampshire society. In 1751 he enrolled in Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
, receiving a BA in 1755 and an MA in 1758. During his time at Harvard, he was a classmate and became a close friend of future Founding Father and President of the United States John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
.
In 1759 the young Wentworth made his first significant investment, joining a partnership in the purchase and development of land in the Lake Winnipesaukee
Lake Winnipesaukee
Lake Winnipesaukee is the largest lake in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. It is approximately long and from wide , covering — when Paugus Bay is included—with a maximum depth of ....
area. Wentworth sat on a committee of partners that oversaw the settlement of the community, which the investors named Wolfeboro
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire
Wolfeboro is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,269 at the 2010 census. A venerable resort area situated beside Lake Winnipesaukee, Wolfeboro includes the village of Wolfeboro Falls...
. In 1763 his father sent him to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to act on behalf of his merchant interests. Based on his father's introductions, he was soon mingling with the upper levels of British society. Among the connections he made was one with the Marquess of Rockingham
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham
Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, KG, PC , styled The Hon. Charles Watson-Wentworth before 1733, Viscount Higham between 1733 and 1746, Earl of Malton between 1746 and 1750 and The Earl Malton in 1750, was a British Whig statesman, most notable for his two terms as Prime...
, a distant relative (although neither was apparently aware of this) and a leading Whig
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
politician. In 1765 Wentworth, still in London, was appointed by the province as one of its agents. That same year Rockingham became Prime Minister and led the repeal of the hated Stamp Act
Stamp Act 1765
The Stamp Act 1765 was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament specifically on the colonies of British America. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp...
. Whether Wentworth influenced Rockingham's decision is uncertain, but New Hampshire's other agent, Barlow Trecothick, drafted with Rockingham a position paper on the matter, and Wentworth was clearly sympathetic to colonial opposition to the Stamp Act.
Wentworth's uncle Benning had spent many years of his governorship lining his pockets by selling land grants
New Hampshire Grants
The New Hampshire Grants or Benning Wentworth Grants were land grants made between 1749 and 1764 by the provincial governor of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth. The land grants, totaling about 135 , were made on land claimed by New Hampshire west of the Connecticut River, territory that was also...
to the west of the Connecticut River
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the largest and longest river in New England, and also an American Heritage River. It flows roughly south, starting from the Fourth Connecticut Lake in New Hampshire. After flowing through the remaining Connecticut Lakes and Lake Francis, it defines the border between the...
, territory to which the province held dubious claim. In 1764 the Lords of Trade ruled that New Hampshire's western border was at the Connecticut River, decisively awarding the territory (the future state of Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
) to the Province of New York
Province of New York
The Province of New York was an English and later British crown territory that originally included all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania...
. The governor, however, refused to resign, leading the Lords of Trade to consider his recall. Wentworth interceded, and convinced them to allow his uncle the dignity of resigning in his nephew's favor.
In August 1766 he was commissioned as Governor and vice admiral of New Hampshire, and surveyor general of the woods in North America. Before he returned to North America he was awarded a Doctorate of Common Law by Oxford University. After a difficult crossing he arrived at Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
in March 1767, where he proceeded to make the first major survey of the forests of Georgia and the Carolinas on behalf of the crown. He then made his way north overland, and was received in Portsmouth with pomp and ceremony on June 13, 1767.
Governor of New Hampshire
Under Wentworth's administration the growing province was divided into five counties to dstribute administration and judicial functions to communities remote from Portsmouth. Wentworth was responsible for naming them, choosing names of current British leaders (including RockinghamRockingham County, New Hampshire
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 277,359 people, 104,529 households, and 74,320 families residing in the county. The population density was 399 people per square mile . There were 113,023 housing units at an average density of 163 per square mile...
), but also name Strafford County
Strafford County, New Hampshire
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 112,233 people, 42,581 households, and 27,762 families residing in the county. The population density was 304 people per square mile . There were 45,539 housing units at an average density of 124 per square mile...
after one of his distant relatives, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford
Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford
Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford was an English statesman and a major figure in the period leading up to the English Civil War. He served in Parliament and was a supporter of King Charles I. From 1632 to 1639 he instituted a harsh rule as Lord Deputy of Ireland...
.
He also began the process of developing roads between the major population centers of the province, which had grown around the coast and the Merrimack
Merrimack River
The Merrimack River is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Massachusetts, and then flows northeast until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Newburyport...
and Connecticut Rivers. Although the provincial assembly was reluctant to fund new roads, Wentworth used quitrents collected on recently-issued land grants to pay for the work. In 1771 he reported having constructed more than 200 miles of roads at a cost of £500. The same year he convinced the assembly to appropriate £100 for surveyor Samuel Holland
Samuel Holland
Samuel Johannes Holland was a Royal Engineer and first Surveyor General of British North America.-Life in the Netherlands:...
to produce the first detailed high quality map of the province.
Wentworth was ironically responsible for significant improvements to the provincial militia organization. When he arrived the militia consisted of about 10,000 men, who were by his report "badly accoutred and scarcely at all disciplined". He expanded the militia, adding 1,600 men and three regiments to the force, and regularly attended regimental reviews.
Although Wentworth was successful in keeping New Hampshire from implementing harsh boycotts in response to the Townshend Acts
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts were a series of laws passed beginning in 1767 by the Parliament of Great Britain relating to the British colonies in North America. The acts are named after Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who proposed the program...
, he was clearly troubled by both colonial resistance to Parliamentary acts and by the introduction of troops into Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1768. He wrote to Rockingham that the troop movement was likely to be problematic, and the government and other reforms were more likely to succeed. New Hampshire businessmen were eventually pressured into adopting a boycott of British goods when Massachusetts businessmen threaten to suspend trade with them.
After the Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies...
in late 1773 further inflamed tensions in New England, Wentworth successfully defused the threat of similar action in Portsmouth. After issuing careful instructions to the master of a ship arriving with a consignment of tea, Wentworth departed Portsmouth for Dover
Dover, New Hampshire
Dover is a city in Strafford County, New Hampshire, in the United States of America. The population was 29,987 at the 2010 census, the largest in the New Hampshire Seacoast region...
. During his absence the tea was landed and stored in the Portsmouth customs house. This removed the possibility of the tea being dumped as it had been in Boston, but the townspeople were still opposed to its presence. A committee of Portsmouth merchants negotiated its safe passage to Halifax, Nova Scotia
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
, and the tea was safely transported through the town and reembarked on a ship.
Wentworth's popularity in the province began to fall as tensions continued to rise in neighboring Massachusetts. When the Boston port was closed
Boston Port Act
The Boston Port Act is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which became law on March 30, 1774, and is one of the measures that were designed to secure Great Britain's jurisdictions over her American dominions.A response to the Boston Tea Party, it outlawed the use...
as punishment for the Tea Party, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage
Thomas Gage
Thomas Gage was a British general, best known for his many years of service in North America, including his role as military commander in the early days of the American War of Independence....
found it increasingly difficult to find workers willing to support the military (despite rampant unemployment caused by the port closure). He therefore asked Wentworth to assist in the procurement of carpenters in New Hampshire to build barracks for the troops. When his secretive methods to do so were exposed and publicized, local revolutionary committees denounced him as an "enemy to the community". Although he intuited that the arrival of Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
on December 13, 1774 was likely to cause trouble, he was unable to prevent the local militia, now effectively under control of the revolutionary committees, from marching on Fort William and Mary the next day and seizing the provincial armaments and gunpowder. Wentworth had warned the garrison before the event, and called for naval support afterward, but it arrived too late to be use.
He eventually asked for further reinforcements but received none, and realized that any attempt to arrest the ringleaders of the rebellion would likely result in an uprising. He organized a small force of trusted men to act as guards of his person and property, and during early 1775 pressure on the province's Loyalist
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
s was prompting some of them to flee to the safety of the British Army presence in Boston. Despite the opening of hostilities with the Battles of Lexington and Concord
Battles of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy , and Cambridge, near Boston...
on April 19 (after which numerous New Hampshire militia went south to join the Siege of Boston
Siege of Boston
The Siege of Boston was the opening phase of the American Revolutionary War, in which New England militiamen—who later became part of the Continental Army—surrounded the town of Boston, Massachusetts, to prevent movement by the British Army garrisoned within...
), Wentworth convened the provincial assembly in late May. Composed primarily of rebel sympathizers, it refused to consider the Conciliatory Resolution
Conciliatory Resolution
The Conciliatory Resolution was a resolution passed by the British Parliament in an attempt to reach a peaceful settlement with the Thirteen Colonies immediately prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War....
proposed by Prime Minister Lord North
Frederick North, Lord North
Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, KG, PC , more often known by his courtesy title, Lord North, which he used from 1752 until 1790, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most of the American War of Independence...
to defuse the crisis. Wentworth therefore prorogued the assembly, hoping that a delay would favorably change the atmosphere. It did not: on May 30, rebel militia began occupying and fortifying Portsmouth. Captain Andrew Barkley of the HMS Scarborough further exacerbated tensions by impressing
Impressment
Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
local fishermen and seizing supplies for use by the troops in Boston. Wentworth managed to defuse the situation by convincing Barkley to release to fishermen.
On June 13, 1775, after his house was surrounded by a mob of armed men seeking to arrest a Loyalist militia officer, Wentworth and his family fled to Fort William and Mary, which was under the guns of the Scarborough. Conditions continued to deteriorate, and Wentworth boarded the Scarborough and sailed for Boston on August 23. After sending his family to England, he remained in the city until it was evacuated to Halifax in March 1776. He remained with the fleet until New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
was captured in September 1776, and finally sailed to England in early 1778. The New Hampshire government established after his departure seized most of his property, but specially reserved to the family portraits and furniture from the Portsmouth mansion.
Nova Scotia
Wentworth later served as the royal governor of Nova ScotiaNova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
from January 23, 1792 to 1808.
He stabilized the colony's finances, tried to settle free blacks who came as Loyalists (they were finally resettled in Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
), and quieted the Indians. Responding to the war with France that began in 1793, he cracked down on internal dissent, especially of the democratic sort voiced by the Yankees. His feuds with the informal leader of the country party, William Cottnam Tonge escalated into a constitutional struggle between the governor-in-council and the House of Assembly, controlled by Tonge. Wentworth, steeped in corruption and nepotism (which is how he became a governor in the first place), assisted the Halifax merchants but neglected everyone else. London removed the reactionary governor in 1808 and replaced him with George Prevost.
While governor he raised the Nova Scotia Regiment and became its first colonel. Wentworth was knighted and awarded a baronetcy
Wentworth Baronets
There have been five Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Wentworth, four in the Baronetage of England and one in the Baronetage of Great Britain. All creations are extinct....
in 1795. He also served as Grand Master of the Free Masons. He retired as governor of Nova Scotia in 1808 on a pension of 6500 dollars.
Family and legacy
Wentworth married Frances Deering Wentworth, the widow of Theodore Atkinson, Junior, Secretary of the Colony of New Hampshire, who had died at Portsmouth, October 28, 1769 two weeks before. Her name is preserved in the towns of FrancestownFrancestown, New Hampshire
Francestown is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,562 at the 2010 census.- History :Incorporated in 1772, Francestown takes its name from Frances Deering Wentworth, the wife of colonial governor John Wentworth. There were 928 residents when the first...
, Deering
Deering, New Hampshire
Deering is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,912 at the 2010 census.-History:First settled about 1765, the town was incorporated on January 17, 1774 by John Wentworth, governor of the province of New Hampshire...
and Wentworth
Wentworth, New Hampshire
-External links:* * * * *...
. She died at Sunninghill, Berkshire
Sunninghill, Berkshire
Sunninghill is a village in the civil parish of Sunninghill and Ascot in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the English shire county of Berkshire-Location:...
, England, February 14, 1813, aged 68. Wentworth died at Halifax, Nova Scotia
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
, on April 8, 1820, aged 84. He was buried in St. Paul's Church
St. Paul's Church (Halifax)
St. Paul's Church is an evangelical Anglican church in downtown Halifax Nova Scotia within the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island of the Anglican Church of Canada. It is located at the south end of the Grand Parade, an open square in downtown Halifax with Halifax City Hall at the...
, where a tablet exists to his memory. The couple had one son, Charles Mary Wentworth, who succeeded to the baronetcy. The son, who served as a councilor in Nova Scotia, died without issue in 1844, extinguishing the baronetcy.
The Governor's Lady, by Thomas H. Raddall, is a novel based on his life.
External links
- Biography in BluPete's History of Nova Scotia
- Paul Wilderson, "Governor John Wentworth" at Seacoastnh.com (A New Hampshire perspective)
- Biography at ns1763.ca