Theodore Trapplan Michael Wentworth (Tappan Wentworth) was born on February 24, 1802, in Dover, New Hampshire, to Isaac and Eleanor Wentworth. According to an early biographer, his father was a “poor man” who “ran a freight-boat between Dover and Portsmouth.” He grew up and attended school in Dover, and he worked as a clerk in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and South Berwick, Maine. He was admitted to the bar in 1826. He worked as a lawyer in South Berwick until November 1833, when he moved to Lowell, Massachusetts.

 

He supported the Whig Party. He helped draft Lowell’s city charter in 1836, and he served on the city council from 1836 until 1841. He married Anne McNeil in January 1842, and their son Frederick was born on March 7, 1843. Frederick, however, died in 1853. Wentworth’s legal practice thrived, and by 1850, he owned $79,900 of real estate. He served in the state senate in 1848 and 1849 and then the state house of representatives in 1851. A biographer described him as “an active Whig advocate—a statesman of the [Daniel] Webster school.”

 

He served one term in Congress, from 1853 until 1855. There, he was reportedly a “sound, shrewd, sagacious member of the House Committee on Commerce.” He fiercely opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. After leaving Congress, he resumed his legal practice in Lowell. He also owned the Lowell Courier and Journal from 1856 until 1860.

 

By the early 1860s, he supported the Republican Party. He served in the state legislature again, on and off, from 1860 until 1866. In later life, he invested in several industries, serving as president of the National Rubber Company and president of at least one railroad company. He died of Bright’s disease in Lowell on June 12, 1875.

 

Image: Theodore T. M. Wentworth (courtesy Wikicommons)

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