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.

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.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

[citation needed] In August 1766, he was commissioned as Governor and vice admiral of New Hampshire, and Surveyor General of the King's Woods in North America.

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.

After the Boston Tea Party in late 1773 further inflamed tensions in New England, Wentworth successfully defused the threat of similar action in Portsmouth.

[8] Although he intuited that the arrival of Paul Revere on 13 December 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.

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 Loyalists 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 19 April (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.

Captain Andrew Barclay of HMS Scarborough further exacerbated tensions by impressing local fishermen and seizing supplies for use by the troops in Boston.

On 13 June 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.

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.

In March 1782, Lord North's ministry fell and the King called on Rockingham and the Earl of Shelburne to form a new government and negotiate peace with the US Congress.

Rockingham had in fact promised him the position and presented him to the King, who thanked Wentworth for his efforts to preserve royal government in New Hampshire.

And given that Britain had just lost about half of its forest lands in North America, he was determined that, for the defense of the realm, the remainder of the choice trees would be protected.

The timber reservations John Wentworth made between 1783 and 1791 not only provided the Royal Navy at a critical time with the masts to defeat Napoleon, but also laid the basis of future crown land policies in what is now Canada.

[12] Prince William Henry, the third son of King George III, made his first visit to Halifax in late 1786, while John Wentworth was away in Cape Breton.

At the age of forty-one (the Prince was twenty-one), she was widely considered to be still quite beautiful, dressed at the height of fashion, and retained the sophistication she had gained in England.

The couple immediately began lobbying for John to get the vacated post, and while his position appeared weak, Henry Dundas decided in his favor based on his experience.

Beginning in 1796, Wentworth obtained funding from the Legislature for an entirely new building, built of stone, which would be both a residence and a public space, a few blocks to the southwest.

Wentworth also improved and expanded roads, increased support to Nova Scotia's poverty stricken Mi'kmaq people and set up the first rescue station on Sable Island.

Wentworth initially enjoyed good relations with the legislature but in later years fell into an escalating confrontation with the informal leader of the country party, William Cottnam Tonge.

The conflict, largely over which branch of government should allocate funds for road-building, grew into a constitutional struggle between the governor-in-council and the House of Assembly, controlled by Tonge.

With the war with France renewed in 1803 and conflict with the United States intensifying, London abruptly replaced Wentworth in 1808 with a military governor, General George Prevost.