muddy streets, in her swelling population and soaring land
values, he read the future's promise for this natural gateway to
the empty, beckoning prairies of the new Northwest. Here
there was no entrenched older generation to pre-empt leader-
ship in public affairs and private enterprise. This was a young
town, where the talents of a beardless Dartmouth graduate
would be appreciated, the more readily when it was noted that
their possessor stood six and one-half feet tall and proclaimed
himself a disciple of Andrew Jackson.

Back home, it was different. Rural New England was in the
midst of that economic revolution which would eventually de-
populate many of her farming communities. New Hampshire
had prolific fathers and more sons than she needed, and the
West attracted many whom the birthplace expelled. New
Hampshire had, for that matter, more Wentworths than she
needed. Their name was as familiar in the state, and as impor-
tant in its history, as the name Lee in Virginia. The American
progenitor of this eminent and numerous family was Elder Wil-
liam Wentworth, who came to America in 1636 with John
Wheelright and moved subsequently to Exeter, and then to
Dover. Among his descendants were the last two royal gover-
nors of New Hampshire, Benning Wentworth and his nephew
John.

In the 1770's, while Governor John Wentworth labored to
hold his colony loyal to the King, a distant cousin of identical
name was standing forth as a leader of the revolutionary op-
position. "ColonelJohn," as this Wentworth was usually called,
to distinguish him from his Tory relative, presided in 1774 over
New Hampshire's first revolutionary convention, served as
chairman of her Committee of Correspondence, and was later
appointed to the highest court of the state. ¹ His son, "John, Jr.,"
represented New Hampshire in the Continental Congress and
signed the Articles of Confederation. His great-grandson, also
a namesake, was the young Dartmouth graduate who, in 1836,
followed the course of empire to Chicago, there to be known as
"Long John," and to make the name Wentworth as famous
upon the prairies as it had been in upper New England.

John Wentworth, Jr. -- the one who signed the Articles of
Confederation-was a man of large family and poor health. He
died of tuberculosis in 1787, leaving his widow with the prob-
lem of supporting seven children. Relatives came to the rescue,
and the youngest, five-year-old Paul, was sent off to live with

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