Colonial Jewish Burial Ground

Two blocks from Touro Synagogue, at the intersection of Touro and Kay Streets, across from the Viking Hotel, is the burial ground the community established in 1677. When consecrated, it was the second Jewish cemetery in North America, the first belonging to Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City. “The Old Jewish Cemetery of Newport” is the oldest extant Jewish burial ground in the country, as the 1656 New York cemetery no longer exists.

The original property purchased by Mordecai Campanell and Moses Pacheco in 1677 measured 30 feet by 40. Additional land was purchased in 1768, resulting in the size the cemetery is today. The 1677 deed stipulated that a fence must encircle the property at all times. A brick wall funded by Abraham Touro in 1822 replaced the first wooden fence, followed by an Egyptian Revival-style gate and fence commissioned by Judah Touro in 1843. Designed by architect Isaiah Rogers, the last enclosures are almost identical to the gates at the Old Granary Burial Ground in Boston (1840) and similar to the Mount Auburn Cemetery gates in Cambridge (1842).

There are 42 known graves. The oldest documented burial was Joseph Frazon of Boston, 1704, and the last known was infant Edwina Rosenstein. She died while visiting Newport in 1866.
(Like Tablets of the Law Thrown Down by David Mayer Gradwohl, The Old Jewish Cemetery of Newport by Rabbi Joshua L. Segal.)