Newport Barracks
Hospital
The Newport Barracks had been built in 1803 on 4 acres in the orginal tract, purchased from old Colonel Taylor's estate in Virginia for $1.
Colonel William Boyd arrived in Newport in March 1811 with 600 men who pitched their tents in the fields adjacent to the Barracks. Newport was an infantry recruiting center for Ohio and Kentucky and furnished equipment and soldiers for the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. During the War of 1812 the post furnished soldiers to go to the front in the second war with Great Britain. Gen. James Taylor Jr. was Quartermaster General and paymaster of the Northwestern Army during this war, thus Newport was an important army supply depot. British prisoners were also brought to Newport.
In 1842 James Taylor asked the government for $20,000 to make improvements at the Barracks. After 35 years of use they were in need of repair. Not only was it approved but Captain J R Irwin of the Quartermaster Department who was sent to Newport to hasten the undertakings, requested money to purchase some additional land, erect officers and laundress quarters and build a hospital.
On 7 January 1845 Irwin informed General Thomas Sidney Jesup that the new hospital was ready for patients, the enlisted men were in their barracks and two sets of officers quarters needed only a stockade to finish them.
Newport Barracks became a depot of the Eastern Department of the Recruiting Service until 16 July 1859 when it was made an independent department. During the Civil War, although Kentucky was a slave state and a politically divided border state, it remained in the Union. Wounded and dying from the war were brought to Newport as well as Confederate prisoners. It is also said that Jefferson Davis, General Robert E Lee and Union General ulysses S Grant did tours of duty at the Newport Barracks.