History of Newport RI

Innocence. Wharton's own Newport cottage was called Land's End. Today, many mansions continue in private use. Hammersmith Farm, the mansion from which Jackie Kennedy was married, was open to tourists as a 'house museum,' but has been purchased and reconverted into a private residence. Many other mansion remain open to tourists. Still others were converted into academic buildings for Salve Regina College in the 1930s when the owners could no longer afford their tax bills.

In the mid-19th century, a large number of Irish immigrants settled in Newport. The Fifth Ward of Newport (in the southern part of the city) became a staunch Irish neighborhood for many generations. To this day, St. Patrick's Day is an important day of pride and celebration in Newport, with a large parade going down Thames Street.

The oldest Catholic parish in Rhode Island, St. Mary's is located on Spring Street, though the current building is not the original one.

Current era

Since the colonial era, Rhode Island would rotate its legislative sessions between Providence, Newport, Bristol, East Greenwich and Kingston and did not have a fixed capital. In 1854 the sessions in the cities other than Providence and Newport were eliminated and finally in 1900, Newport was dropped. A constitutional amendment that year restricted the meetings of the legislature to Providence. Connecticut was the only other state to have more than one capital at one time.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in St. Mary's Church in Newport on September 12, 1953.

Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower both made Newport the sites of their "Summer White Houses" during their years in office. Eisenhower stayed at Quarters A at the Naval War