Northern Kentucky University students are working to better understand the history buried at the Newport Barracks.
The Newport Barracks site was a part of the United States Army operations for over a century. Thousands of soldiers called the barracks home during its use, and today, it remains a historical landmark in the city.
Director of the Master of Public History program at NKU Brian Hackett and his students conducted research and now are at the digging stage—a project Hackett said has taken some time.
“There’s a lot of development going on here, and the city wants to redo this park, and because it’s a historic site, they wanted to do it right,” Hackett said. “So, they brought in the state, they came to us to do historical research, and this is a combination of about three years’ worth of work. It’s great to see the shovel in the ground, and we’re excited.”
NKU faculty, students, archeologists and others gathered to work at the site next to General James Taylor Park and across the river from Cincinnati.
Hackett said they are really interested in the history of the fort. He said the site was a significant location for The War of 1812. Students found that there were several soldier suicides that took place at the barracks, and people’s families were living there. Hackett said they are excited to eventually be able to share their findings with the community.
Masters of Public History student Briegh Soto was on site of the dig and said the project has been a roller coaster of research. Soto said you get little information if you try to find anything about the Newport Barracks. Thus, she began her search in newspapers and utilized various search engines to find connections, working with her classmates when they hit roadblocks.
“We’re hoping that with today, we can get more documentation out there showing that this is what we can find, this is what we think, and try to put the puzzle back together for the Newport Barracks,” Soto said.
Hackett said in their first shovel of the day, they found pieces of Native American pottery, which he said tells them that people were probably living there for about 1,000 years.
“It’s exciting that the stuff that we’re finding kind of confirms how important this place was,” Hackett said.
Project Archaeologist with Western Kentucky University Lori Stahlgren was on site and noted a piece of brown salt-glazed stoneware from early England that was found.
“Most of our ceramics came from England, so while English prisoners were held here, this was probably brought over as a trade good, not from them,” she said.
Stahlgren said the barracks were operational until the 1870s or 80s, and then they were utilized in different ways. Therefore, she said they will have artifacts from the beginning until today, with most of them from the 19th century.
With the flood wall being built and things that have caused a disturbance, Stahlgren said they would have to keep looking at the sides of the trenches to determine layers and things of that nature.
The equipment work is expected to last roughly one week. Depending on what they find, archeologists may do more delicate work with shovels and trowels.
Soto said she hopes to uncover past life.
“We’ll probably find mostly pottery and fragments of those sorts of things, but I’m hoping to find material things like maybe some toys, fragments of walls, or even glass,” she said.
Sotto said those items would help them determine if others lived on the land besides soldiers.
“There might have been families here. There may have been gatherings. We just don’t know these people because they just weren’t documented,” she said.
Once the items are dug up, Hackett said they will be cleaned and cataloged by the students. He said the public history program teaches people how to work in museums and historic sites, an important piece of this project.
After the artifacts are cleaned and cataloged, they will be stored at the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington. Hackett said they also hope to put kiosks at the site that show what the fort was like and how people lived during that time.
“There’s some great history here, and I can’t stress that enough,” Hackett said. “What happened here, and what was going on here, helped shape what was to come after. This was a very important staging area for the settlement of the west; it was a very important staging area for The War of 1812 and some of the Indian wars. I mean, this place was really important.”
