Young
Nicholas's childhood was passed in indigence, and it is said that he was
apprenticed to a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a
means of livelihood. However this may be, it is certain that when very
young he went to South Carolina as a clerk for his elder brother. The
climate of the South, however, did not suit his health, and he returned
to Newark, and began the study of the law.
He was poor, and the East was overcrowded, even at that early day, and
offered but few inducements to a young man entirely dependent upon his
own efforts. Ohio was then the "Far West," and emigration was setting in
toward it rapidly. Those who had seen the country related what then
seemed marvelous tales of its wonderful fertility and progress. Few
professional men were seeking the distant land, and Longworth felt
convinced that the services of such as did go would assuredly be in
demand, and he resolved to cast his lot with the West.
In 1803, at the age of twenty-one, he removed to the little village of
Cincinnati, and, having fixed upon this place as his future home,
entered the law office of Judge Jacob Burnet, long the ablest jurist in
Ohio.
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