 William E. Worthen was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts on March 14, 1819.His father, Ezra Worthen, was one of the creators of Lowell, Massachusetts as a center of manufacturing, and the first Superintendent of the Merrimac Mills.William E. Worthen graduated from Harvard in 1838 and commenced the profession of civil engineering under the tutorship of Samuel Morse Felton, an assistant in the office of the then prominent engineer Colonel Loammi Baldwin Jr..