Adam and Sampson
Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 July 1860, page 1
REMINISCENCES OF NEWPORT
An old pioneer of the West, and once a resident of Newport, gives
us below some interesting incidents of the early settlement of our city.
He says: to one who now visits Covington, Newport and Cincinnati, and crosses on
one of the elegant steam ferry boats, it may seem strange to be told that in the
memory of one only fifty years of age all the crossing was done in skiffs and
flats.
There are some few yet living who remember old Adam and old Sampson, two negro men who belonged to General Taylor, who kept the ferry from Newport to Cincinnati. They (the ferries) were slow institutions even in their day. Many a time, have we, when a boy, sat on the river shore for hours waiting for an opportunity to get across, and then been literally blistered by the sun before we could be landed on the Cincinnati side.