John Wentworth (1737-1820) was Governor of the Province of New Hampshire from 1767 to 1775
John Wentworth was born on August 9, 1737, in Portsmouth, then part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The son of Mark Hunking Wentworth (1709-1785) and Elizabeth Rindge Wentworth, John was a member of one of the wealthiest and most politically prominent families in the province of New Hampshire. He was educated at Harvard College, earning a B.A. in 1755, and M.A. in 1758. John married his first cousin, Frances Deering Atkinson Wentworth (1745–1813), in November 1769, and they had one son, Charles Mary Wentworth.
Wentworth invested in land speculation, worked in his father’s counting house, and served as the London agent for his father’s business. In August 1766, Wentworth was appointed Governor following his uncle Benning Wentworth’s ouster due to malfeasance. King George III also appointed Wentworth as vice admiral of the Province of New Hampshire, and Surveyor General of the King's Woods in North America. Three years later, in 1769, Wentworth issued the charter and a land grant for Dartmouth College.
Wentworth’s efforts to mediate the escalating conflicts between the crown and its New England colonies eventually failed. In 1775, a mob stormed the governor’s mansion, and Wentworth and his family escaped to a British fort. His family immediately left for England, but Wentworth remained until the revolutionaries captured New York City in 1776. He then accompanied the British fleet to Nova Scotia.
In 1791, Wentworth was appointed Lt. Governor of Nova Scotia and served until 1808. On May 16, 1795, the British government honored him with a knighthood and a baronetcy. Wentworth died in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on April 8, 1820 at the age of 84.
Notes
Sarah Elizabeth Chute, "‘To ship her to the West Indies, and there dispose of her as a Slave’: Connections of Enslaved People to the Loyalist Maritimes and the West Indies." Acadiensis 51. 2 (2022): 34-59.
Brian Cuthbertson, The Loyalist Governor: Biography of Sir John Wentworth (Halifax, NS: Petheric Press, 1983).
Paul W. Wilderson, Governor John Wentworth and the American Revolution: The English Connection (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1993).