Newport Manufacturing Company
General James Taylor laid out a 27 acre,
factory district along the Ohio River between Eastern Row and Taylor Creek in
1831. After raising $78,000 in stock to capitalize the Newport
Manufacturing Company, Taylor brought in the following stockholders:
Colonel James Taylor, son of James Taylor
John W Tibbatts, Taylor's granddaughter's husband
William M Walker
Benjamin Clifford Jr.
Isaiah Thomas
Darius B Holbrook
S R M Holboork
The firm was incorporated on November 26, 1831 and within five years had invested another $150,000, employed 75 workmen on a daily basis, and allowed 254 local seamstresses to supplement their families' income through the "putting-out" system by which they prepared fabric to be woven by carding or spinning fibers at home. The following is the newspaper article from the Cincinnati Daily Gazette January 9, 1836.
"At Newport there is a Steam Saw-mill and at this place are the extensive works of the Newport Manufacturing Company, incorporated by the Legislature of Kentucky in November 1831. The Company has invested $250,000 in real estate and machinery. The works of the Company, besides 36 comfortable dwelling houses for the operatives, consists of a cotton factory, a wollen factory; fifty power looms for the manufacture of Kentucky jeans, lindseys and cotton plains; an extensive machine-shop for building machinery; a rope walk; a hemp mill of 24 power looms, and the necessary auxiliary machinery for the manufacturer of cotton bagging, by steam power. The company at this time given employment to 329 operatives and last month October manufactured 4056 yards Kentucky Jeans, 3716 yards Lenseys, 5299 yards Cotton Plains, 200# Cotton Bagging, 2500# Cotton Yarns, 18,284# Bale Rope, 36,568 Cotton Bagging.
During the ensuing two months, the number of operatives in the Mills of the Company will be increased from 70 to 100; its production of Cotton Bagging will be increased one fourth; the amount of Kentucky jeans and Cotton yarns manufacturing will be doubled, and the Rope Walk which is now being finished, will annually consume 200 Tons of Hemp and employ 30 to 35 operatives.
Almost all the manufactures at Newport and Covington being exported to foreign markets, it will result that the annual exports from these points will, in round numbers, be from the Interior, $750,000; Campbell, 150,000; Boone County, 234,000; Covington, 548,500; Newport 358,500. The Newport Manufacturing Company has depended principally for its supply of Hemp on the production of Mason County of which Maysville is the market this season they have not been able to get a supply at Maysville, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of Hemp manufacturers in Kentucky that this Company, owing to the scarcity and high prices of Hemp in Kentucky, has imported the present season 354,201# of Russia Hemp."