William J. Worth - Postwar Service

Postwar Service

In 1848, Worth was approached by a group of Cuban Freemasons known as the Havana Club, composed of sugar plantation owners and aristocrats, who advocated the overthrow of the Spanish colonial government in Cuba. The Havana Club sent college professor Ambrosio José Gonzales to entreat Worth to lead an invasion of Cuba. Knowing Worth was also a Freemason, Gonzales greeted the war hero with the Masonic secret handshake, and subsequently offered him three million dollars to lead an invasion force of five thousand American veterans of the Mexican-American War against the Spanish in Cuba. Worth accepted the offer, but before the plot could be concluded, he was transferred by the War Department to Texas.

He was in command of the Department of Texas when he died of cholera in 1849 in San Antonio. His remains were reinterred in a monument on Worth Square on a traffic island between Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 25th Street in New York City's borough of Manhattan. The monument was designed and built by James G. Batterson in 1857. Each spike of the cast-iron fence surrounding the memorial is topped with a plumed helmet, reflective of the plumed helmet Worth is shown wearing in the memorial. Worth Street (Manhattan) at the southern end of Little Italy was named in his honor.

The cities of Fort Worth, Texas and Lake Worth, Texas, the village of Worth, Illinois, Worth County, Georgia and the Lake Worth Lagoon in Florida, and consequently, the city of Lake Worth, Florida on its shores, are named in his honor. Worth was married to a woman named Rebecca C. Goodman.