Watson-Wentworth served two terms as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and greatly advocated for colonial independence.

[8] Almost two hundred years later, in the 1990s, the Wentworth community was facing the possibility of much of its area being annexed into neighboring Reidsville which had repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to take the county seat for over a century.

In 1998, with approval from the state General Assembly, the town of Wentworth amended the lapse within their original 1798 charter and remained as its own municipality.

Until its reactivation (which included an area considerably larger than the original courthouse village of approximately one hundred people) Wentworth was the smallest county seat in the state.

[11] Originally, the first session of the Rockingham County Court met at Eagle Falls on the Dan River in 1786.

However, in 1798, the General Assembly of North Carolina passed an act which established the county seat to be known as Wentworth at the site of the 1787 Courthouse.

On October 2, 1906, a terrific fire destroyed the old courthouse and a new one, designed by famed architect Frank Pierce Milburn, was constructed at a cost of $25,000.

The newer courthouse was composed almost entirely of bricks and had two beautiful rounded pillars which quickly became a trademark of the Wentworth community.

It was at this courthouse in August 1932 that Broadway torch singer Libby Holman posted bond when she was charged (later acquitted) with the alleged murder of her husband, tobacco heir Z. Smith Reynolds of Winston-Salem.