Est. 1677 · Second-Oldest Jewish Cemetery in North America · Touro Synagogue National Historic Site · Colonial Sephardic Heritage · Isaiah Rogers Egyptian Revival Gate
Touro Cemetery, also known as the Colonial Jewish Burial Ground, was dedicated in 1677 at the intersection of present-day Touro Street, Kay Street, and Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. The cemetery is the second-oldest Jewish cemetery in North America, predated only by Chatham Square Cemetery in New York City.
The earliest Jewish settlers in Newport arrived from Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century. The Caribbean Jewish community had been established by Spanish-Portuguese Sephardic refugees fleeing the Inquisition through Amsterdam and London. Newport's religious tolerance under the 1663 Royal Charter of Rhode Island Colony provided a stable American foothold; the Newport congregation grew steadily through the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The Touro Synagogue, designed by Peter Harrison and completed in 1763, sits adjacent to the cemetery on the same parcel grouping. The synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States and remains in active use. The community's prominence during the colonial period generated correspondence including George Washington's 1790 letter to the Newport congregation, one of the most-cited early-American statements on religious tolerance.
The cemetery contains forty-two identified burials. The earliest documented stone belongs to Joseph Frazon, a Boston merchant interred in 1704; the most recent stone marks the burial of infant Edwina Rosenstein in 1866. Inscriptions appear in Hebrew, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Ladino, and English. The cemetery's distinctive Egyptian Revival cast-iron gate and surrounding fence were designed by Boston architect Isaiah Rogers, who designed an identical gate for Boston's Old Granary Burying Ground.
The cemetery was the subject of two significant nineteenth-century American poems: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (1854) and Emma Lazarus's response In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport (1867). Both poems became standard texts in American literary anthologies. The Touro Cemetery Preservation Association maintains the site today; the gated cemetery is opened to the public only once per year.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touro_Cemetery
- https://tourosynagogue.org/history/jewish-burial-ground/
- https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/touro-cemetery
- https://buildingsofnewengland.com/2021/12/12/touro-jewish-cemetery-and-gate-1677/
Web research did not surface a developed paranormal-investigation tradition at Touro Cemetery. Newport's well-established ghost-tour industry concentrates its content on the White Horse Tavern, the Newport Artillery Company armory, the Belcourt Mansion, and other downtown commercial and Gilded Age properties; Touro Cemetery is not a standard stop on Newport ghost-tour itineraries.
The cemetery's significance derives from its historical and literary record rather than from supernatural tradition. The site is the second-oldest Jewish cemetery in North America, the adjacent Touro Synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States, and the cemetery's inclusion in Longfellow's 1854 poem The Jewish Cemetery at Newport made it one of the earliest American historic sites to receive sustained literary attention. Emma Lazarus's 1867 reply, In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport, established a paired literary record across two generations of nineteenth-century American letters.
Visitors interested in supernatural narratives at Newport should engage with the standard ghost-tour operators serving downtown and the Bellevue Avenue mansions. Visitors interested in the substantive historical and literary record at Touro should pair their cemetery viewing with a Touro Synagogue tour during the synagogue's regular operating hours.
Media Appearances
- The Jewish Cemetery at Newport (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1854)
- In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport (Emma Lazarus, 1867)
