Benning Wentworth is not a name you’ll run across in New Hampshire primary coverage. But he arguably did as much as anyone else to establish the political culture — or cultures — of America’s first-in-the-nation primary state.

Wentworth was governor of New Hampshire from 1741 to 1766, the longest-serving colonial governor, and with his father successfully lobbied to make New Hampshire, surrounded by Massachusetts and its Maine territory, a separate colony.