24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Newport, RI

Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, approximately 33 miles southeast of Providence, and it is the county seat of Newport County, with a population of 25,163 at the 2020 census.

Newport was founded in 1639 by eight founders including William Coddington and John Clarke, who had separated from the settlement at Portsmouth along with Anne Hutchinson and her followers and began the settlement on the southern side of the island.

Newport was incorporated as a town in 1639 and as a city in 1784.

As of the 2020 census, Newport had a population of 25,163, with 10,898 households and 4,982 families, and the city covers 11.37 square miles in total, of which 7.66 square miles is land.

Newport was the most important port in colonial Rhode Island, and in 1658 a group of Jews fleeing the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal was welcomed to settle there, becoming Congregation Jeshuat Israel, the second-oldest Jewish congregation in the United States, which meets in Touro Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in America.

The Old Colony House at the head of Washington Square served as the seat of Rhode Island's government from 1741 until the current Rhode Island State House was completed in Providence in 1904.

Newport was a major center of the colonial slave trade in the triangle trade, and in 1764 Rhode Island had about 30 rum distilleries, 22 of them in Newport, while the Free African Union Society, founded in Newport in 1780, was the first African mutual aid society in America.

The British occupied Newport on December 8, 1776, and a French expedition under the comte de Rochambeau arrived on July 10, 1780, making Newport the base of the French forces in the United States for the rest of the Revolutionary War, while the city's population fell from over 9,000 in 1774 to fewer than 4,000 by the end of the war in 1783.

It was in Newport that the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to ratify the Constitution in 1790, making Rhode Island the 13th state.

Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, wealthy families built summer mansions on Bellevue Avenue, including Kingscote in 1839, Chateau-sur-Mer in 1852, and The Breakers in 1895, and the Vanderbilts and Astors were among the families summering in Newport, while Hammersmith Farm is where John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy held their wedding reception.