Madison Street Burying Ground
Newport 1800-1838
Research done by C B Trusedell of the Northern Kentucky
Historical Society
Madison Street Burying Ground was the first cemetery in Newport and opened in 1800, five years after Newport was chartered by the Kentucky Legislature. It received its name from the quaint thoroughfare between Monmouth and York which was the predecessor of Fifth Street.
There were 15 people buried in the cemetery, most of them veterans of the War of 1812, but other prominent citizens were interred here.
Hubbard Berry was born 1794 and died 8 Oct 1821 in Campbell County. He was the son of Washington & Alice Thornton (Taylor). He was removed from here and reburied in October 1871 in Evergreen Cemetery section 19 lot 15.
Washington Berry was buried here in May of 1813, as was his wife Alice Taylor Berry in May of 1837. They were moved 21 May 1866 to Evergreen Cemetery. She was the sister of General James Taylor, and Washington was one of Newport's first trustees and first judge of the Quarterly Sessions Court of Campbell County.
Peter McArthur was born in 1764 in Scotland and came to Newport in 1815. He died in July 1828 and when his wife Mary (nee Michie) McArthur died in 1853 he was moved to Newport Cemetery in Southgate by her side.
Another person buried here was Daniel Allen Thatcher who died Dec 31, 1813, in Newport. He was from Alexandria but apparently no one came to get the body and the city was directed to bury him there.
By 1840 Newport needed to expand, so the Newport fathers closed the cemetery and uprooted the graves of their pioneer forebears to make way for more houses. Some were moved to the Newport Cemetery. In some cases they did not even bother with this formality and simply built over their graves.
There are few records that indicate which of these bodies
were moved to Newport Cemetery or later to Evergreen. In 1960 workers
repaving a parking lot on Fifth Street just West of Monmouth Street used by
patrons of Glenn Schmidt's found a cracked tombstone with Washington and Alice
Berry names on it. When Washington and
Alice's son James died in 1864, his will directed that the bodies of
his parents be reburied next to him in the Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate and
there is a marker to that effect.