Thomas Worthington (July 16, 1773 – June 20, 1827) was an American politician who served as the sixth governor of Ohio.
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Early life
Worthington was born in Berkeley County near Charles Town in the Colony of Virginia. In 1796, he married a Virginia woman, Eleanor Swearingen, who joined him in emigrating to Ross County, Ohio, where they emancipated their slaves. Worthington was of English descent, and his ancestors were loyalists during the reign of King Charles. The home they eventually built just outside Chillicothe was called Adena and is the namesake of the Adena culture. The first of their ten children, daughter Mary, married David Macomb, a future leader of the Texas Revolution. A son, also Thomas, graduated from West Point in 1827, held the rank of Brigadier General in the Ohio Militia, and later fought in the Mexican-American War and Civil War.
Career
He served in the Territorial House of Representatives from 1799 to 1803 and served as a Ross county delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1802. He was a leader of the Chillicothe Junto, a group of Chillicothe Democratic-Republican politicians who brought about the admission of Ohio as a state in 1803 and largely controlled its politics for some years thereafter. Among his colleagues in the faction were Nathaniel Massie and Edward Tiffin.