Gorham A. Worth

by

According to traditiional sources, Gorham A. Worth was born at/on Quaker Hill (Dutchess County) in 1782 or '83. Tradition holds that his family moved to Hudson when he was fifteen - a place Gorham considered to be his first home. He was the son of Quakers Thomas Worth and his third wife, Abigail Jenkins, who were among the Yankee pioneers who came from Martha's Vineyard to establish the city of Hudson. His brother or cousin was General William J. Worth.

In November 1810, he married Lydia Dakin of Hudson. The marriage produced at least seven children.

After clerking in the business of a Hudson merchant, from 809 to 1811, he held the position of clerk of "Bank of Hudson."

About age twenty, he removed to Albany. By 1813, he had taken the position of Cashier of the Mechanics & Farmers Bank in Albany at 151 Court Street. After 1816, his name no longer appeared in city directories.

Worth left Albany in 1817 seeking to retire from the turmoil of the banking business. He settled in Ohio but soon took the position of cashier of the United States branch bank in Cincinnati.

By the 1820s, he was a banker in New York City whose career there was profiled in the Old Merchants of New York.

He was the author of a number of antiquarian works over a long period of time. After his death, his most remembered contribution - an unpublished manuscript, was acquired by Joel Munsell and published as Random Recollections of Albany, from 1800 to 1808 in 1866. It certainly is required reading for all students of Albany history. At the same time, however, it is among the most notorious defenders of the persistence of Albany's so-called "Dutchness"."

Gorham A. Worth died in New York City in April 1856 at the age of seventy-three. He was survived by four sons and two daughters.


biography in-progress


notes

the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Gorham A. Worth is CAP biography number 6941. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. This sketch focuses on his Albany years (perhaps from 1812 to 1816 or so) and leaves his earlier and later lives to more interested interpreters. Wikipedia. See also this more readable transformation of his Random Recollections.





first opened 1/10/09; updated 1/19/14