Why would someone of Wentworth’s background find Paterson such an appealing place filled with opportunity? What was the city like when he arrived?

From a current point of view, the appeal of Paterson to someone of Wentworth’s education and social standing is curious and even rather remarkable. There are no indications in any of Wentworth’s notes or biographies of any of the usual connections like family or friends drawing him to Paterson. From what we know, Wentworth had no family or direct business connections to the city and there aren’t any obvious employment links. Of all the places for a well educated, well born and ambitious New Englander to locate, why would Paterson, still a relatively small industrial city fifteen miles from New York, be a logical choice?

From the perspective of the early 1890s, choosing to move to Paterson was in fact a very logical choice – particularly for someone like Wentworth. The city was the center of a growing and vibrant area and was a place of innovation. The local economy was dynamic on a variety of levels and was growing tremendously. Paterson was benefiting from development in industrial agglomeration.

Paterson had a variety of things going for it. First and foremost, the city’s growth was based on plentiful and inexpensive energy from the Great Falls and a series of canals and sluiceways that had brought rapidly flowing water to the industrial section of the city. Although the Passaic River wasn’t navigable, it provided also plentiful water needed for a variety of industrial processes. When Wentworth arrived, the mill areas around the Great Falls were humming with a huge variety of successful industrial ventures. Contemporary photographs show the vitality of mill upon mill clustered in the area of the Great Falls.

HINCHliffe Residence.

Perhaps most importantly, Wentworth arrived in Paterson in 1888 when the city was reaching the apex of its reputation as the ‘Silk City – the Lyons of America’. This was a city where remarkable fortunes were being made and there were opportunities to succeed.

Paterson was being led by a political and business community with values that Wentworth would likely find appealing. The city’s leadership were men intent on success and creating an environment where industry and commerce would readily succeed. The business and political elite in Paterson were an unusual group and must have quite accessible to someone like Wentworth. Silk mills and heavy manufacturing dominated the local economy and “English born” dominated the business leadership. Owners of textile mills were largely immigrants themselves, often coming from the trades or lower middle class backgrounds, from established industrial cities in Europe. Like so many immigrants, there were connections to cities in the homeland that brought even more seekers of opportunity.

The English born had their roots in Macclesfield in Cheshire, an industrial city that had been linked to the silk industry since the Middle Ages. Many of the mill owners, although quite wealthy, lived in Paterson, had a feel for local people and were not far removed from the rest of the city.

Paterson in the late Nineteenth Century was a place of opportunity and the culture and social networks actually supported a rather significant level of mobility. Unlike other American industrial cities like Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts for example, the growing business elite came from the skilled workers within the city, not from outside investors who were already in the upper class. There was a pool of talented and trained men in Paterson, who emerged from the ranks of skilled machinists and mechanics, who were ready to seize upon economic opportunities.

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