For the following three years, she was employed at a Lowell, Massachusetts cotton factory, working for fourteen hours each day and pursuing her studies in the evenings at a select school.

She then resumed teaching, and became a pupil-assistant in the Andover Academy, paying for her own tuition by instructing younger classes.

In 1858, she removed with him to Lynn, Massachusetts where he was engaged in manufacturing until his death in 1882, and where she continued to have her home nearly up to the time of her decease.

[1] After marriage, she worked to carry her share of their mutual burdens, but after a time, she engaged in study and composition, and wrote prose sketches and poems.

The great work of Worthen's life was the preparation of a history of her native town, Sutton, extending to over eleven-hundred pages.