Fort Worth Magazine
Part of Mayor Mattie Parker's remarks on Tuesday were directed to Gen. Worth's descendants, who traveled to town for the occasion.
Artifacts that hold deep historical significance to the city of Fort Worth are back on display at the sparkling new City Hall, only a stone’s throw from where Maj. Ripley Arnold nailed U.S. Army stakes in ground in 1849.
The uniform, hat, hat container, a ceremonial sash, and a pair of epaulets worn by Maj. Gen. William Jenkins Worth — one of America’s leading generals of the 19th century and the namesake of Fort Worth — will be on view near the front entrance for the next three months.
The artifacts’ permanent home is the Museum of Science and History, which has housed the uniform for more than 40 years.
A public event welcoming the relics to City Hall also served as a celebration of their return home, following their temporary relocation to Dallas for conservation work aimed at better preserving the textiles.
A grant from the Texas Historical Foundation paid for the preservation efforts.
In her role as the city’s top elected official, Mayor Mattie Parker presided over the ceremony marking the return of the historic relics. She underscored the city’s commitment to honoring its roots while looking ahead and shaping the path forward.
Fort Worth Magazine
Members of the Sprague family include Susan Bickett, Sharon Callis, Steven Sprague, and Sara Sprague.
“We're reminded how deeply our city's roots are tied to the service, courage, and vision of those who came before us,” Parker said. “This collection, a preserved set of military items dating back to the early 1800s, is far more than historic fabric and polished metals. Each piece tells a story of dedication, sacrifice, and leadership, and a story that helps shape not only the founding of Fort Worth but the westward expansion of our entire nation.”
Worth’s stuff was initially donated to the Museum of Science and History by his descendants in the early 1980s. Those family members were in attendance on Tuesday.
Gen. Worth had two children, Gen. William Scott Worth and Mary Worth. William Worth had no heirs, so, the artifacts were passed down through Mary Worth Sprague and her son Gen. John Titcomb Sprague.
John Titcomb Sprague was “our grandfather’s dad,” said Sara Sprague, great-great-great-granddaughter of Gen. Worth. “Our grandfather did a great job of preserving all of this. We had it in a big trunk. We have other items, too. We have a sword and a portrait and other things.”
Sprague was joined there by three siblings and two nephews.
Fort Worth resident Bill Turner, on a hunt for Gen. Worth treasure, found the Sprague family more than 40 years ago.
Gen. Worth never set foot in Fort Worth. He died shortly before Ripley Arnold founded the fort. It was Worth who had devised a plan of a line of forts in Texas to pacify the western reaches.
It was believed with some degree of certainty that Worth, a popular figure as the hero of the Mexican War, had been sent to Texas to be as far away from the center of power in Washington, D.C.
After his death in San Antonio, Worth was transported back to his home in Hudson, New York. His permanent resting place is in New York City at a monument located in Worth Square.
Kind of like Bill Turner, in recent years my interest in Gen. Worth intensified after reading Ron Chernow’s fantastic biography on Ulysses S. Grant, a tome in its truest, scholarly sense that played a leading role in sending to the ash heap Grant’s unjust legacy.
“I found General Worth a different man from any I had before served directly under,” Grant said in his highly acclaimed memoirs, written on his deathbed. “He was nervous, impatient and restless on the march, or when important or responsible duty confronted him.
“He enjoyed, however, a fine reputation for his fighting qualities, and thus attached his officers and men to him.”
A highly sympathetic and out-of-print Worth biography, General William Jenkins Worth: Monterey’s Forgotten Hero, authored by Edward Wallace and published by SMU in 1953 is out there. But its scarcity has elevated the cost of a copy to the price of beef.
Wallace said he took up the subject of Worth because he didn’t believe history did him any justice. One reason for that, Wallace added: Winfield Scott lived 20 years longer and made sure to sully his legacy. Worth and Scott, a blowhard if there ever was one, had for years been very close friends. In fact, Gen. William Scott Worth — Gen. Worth’s son — had been given the name Winfield Scott Worth at birth. It was changed after the elders’ falling out.
At issue: Gen. Worth got far more credit for triumph in the Mexican War than Scott could handle. Nothing out there uglier than jealously.
Anyway, one guy — probably only one guy, me — has even wondered aloud, while sipping on something, about Worth being elected president in 1852. That presupposes that Worth didn’t die in 1849.
All it takes is a Google search of the 51-foot high Worth granite obelisk memorial structure and burial place in New York to understand that, using the criteria of the present, he was a big deal in his day. Certainly not Elvis big, but Worth was considered, as the author of that bio glowingly declares, the “beau sabreur” of the U.S. Army — the most gallant, most handsome warrior and best horseman in service to his country.
His burial procession, some nine years after his death — Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Gen. Worth’s monument and final burial place — included Gov. John King, 6,500 soldiers, Mayor Fernando Wood and a bevy of Tammany politicos. As the New York Press described it, New York’s shops closed at noon and church bells began to toll. Sixteen iron gray horses pulled the catafalque and his mahogany casket in a two-mile long parade. Bands played Handel’s Dead March from Saul.
Marching to his final resting place were even “saucy” vivandiere with laced pantaloons showing beneath skirts carrying a small wine keg slung from her shoulder, according to Wallace’s dissertation, the basis of his book.
“The gallant chivalric Worth was ever seen with waving plume, in the heat of combat, leading to victory,” a soldier said that day in 1857. “His fame will endure when his monument shall have crumbled.”
So admired was Worth by the public — he was the first American to plant an American flag south of the disputed territory of the Nueces River — that many speculated at the time after the Mexican War that superiors in the U.S. Army as well as political movers in Washington, D.C., maneuvered to see to it that Worth be appointed to a position in Texas.
In Texas, he would be as far away from the centers of American power after the widely successful end of the Mexican War and his celebrated role in it as commander of the Eighth Infantry.
Author Wallace recalled its summit.
“At the Jackson Day dinner of the New York City Democrats, on Jan. 8, 1848, a toast to him as a man of ‘real worth’ was received with wild enthusiasm, while no mention was made of any other general but [Zachary] Taylor.
“On Jan. 15, 1848, the New York Herald printed a call for a meeting to take place on Feb. 22 to nominate Gen. Worth for the presidency, a boom which had been initiated the previous August by the New York Sun.”
Gen. Worth, your stuff here will be treated with the reverence it has earned. You would have beaten the tar out of Winfield Scott in the election of 1852.
