Revolution, his possessions were confiscated, and he and his family impoverished. 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. He soon won the confidence and esteem of his instructor, and succeeded so well in his studies that in an unusually short time he was admitted to the bar.
He entered upon the practice of his profession with energy, and soon acquired a profitable business, which increased rapidly. He was a man of simple habits, and lived economically. His savings were considerable, and were regularly invested by him in real estate in the suburbs of the town. Land was cheap at that time, some of his lots costing him but ten dollars each. Long before his death they were worth more than as many thousands. He had a firm conviction that Cincinnati was destined to become one of the largest and most flourishing cities in the Union, and that his real estate would increase in value at a rate which would render him wealthy in a very few years.