Wentworth Home for Aged People - Portsmouth, New Hampshire - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The Wentworth Home for Aged People, cor. Pleasant and Wentworth Sts. (R), has as its right wing an old house built in 1769 by Governor John Wentworth, who was a Royalist at the same time that his father and uncle were active participants in the Patriot cause. In 1775, one Fenton, a Tory, a former captain in the English army and a member of the Exeter Convention, took refuge in this house. A mob of Patriots gathered in front of the house and demanded that Fenton be given up and taken to Exeter for trial. The Governor considered him self insulted and left the house by a back way through the garden to South Mill Pond. Here he boarded a boat and was taken to Fort William and Mary. Meanwhile the mob entered and ransacked the house. In one of the front rooms a broken piece of marble is a memento of this attack. Governor Wentworth afterward went to England, where he was created a baronet and later appointed Governor of Nova Scotia. A friend to education, he was a benefactor of Dartmouth College and made a grant of land to each member of the first graduating class. - New Hampshire: A Guide to the Granite State, Portsmouth section, pg. 231.

The building is in very good condition and serves as an senior citizens assisted living facility.