Reviewed by Josh N · Updated July 27, 2026 · How we verify
Reported Phenomena
- Spectral figures
- Unexplained sounds
Reported by visitors & local legend. Stories, not verified claims.
Older than the United States and still operating under the same piece of paper that created it, the Newport Artillery Company armory sits on a narrow side street a short walk from the Newport, Rhode Island waterfront. The company was chartered in 1741 by the Rhode Island General Assembly during the reign of King George II, and it is the oldest military unit in the country still operating under its original charter. The stone and brick building at 23 Clarke Street holds its museum. Anyone hunting for a ghost story here should know up front that the documentary record supplies a great deal of history and no reported hauntings. (Sorry they can’t all be winners)
A 1741 Charter the Assembly Refused to Void
The Newport Artillery was the first chartered independent unit in the Rhode Island Militia, and it came with unusual privileges. Where most colonial militia companies served under officers commissioned by the governor, this one elected its own, and it answered only to the governor rather than to the militia hierarchy above it. Its first commanding officer was Captain Jahleel Brenton, who lived from 1691 to 1767, a grandson of Governor William Brenton and father of a future rear admiral in the Royal Navy.
The Revolution nearly ended the company. British forces occupied Newport for almost three years beginning in December 1776, and with members split in their loyalties the unit went dormant. It stayed that way until 1792, when Francis Malbone, elected to Congress that same year, asked the General Assembly whether the 1741 charter still held. The Assembly found no reason it did not. Malbone was elected captain, and the line of continuity that makes the company remarkable was preserved.
From Lake Erie to a Railroad Bridge at Tiverton
The company’s service record is long and specific. Members followed Newport native Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Put-in-Bay, Ohio, and fought at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. In 1814 the company garrisoned Fort Greene in the Point section of Newport, standing down when the Treaty of Ghent was signed early in 1815. During the Dorr War of 1842 to 1843 it volunteered to lead the charge against the Dorr defenses, and for that it still claims the right of line in any parade in Rhode Island.
In April 1861 the company was mustered into Federal service as Company F of the 1st Rhode Island Infantry under Captain George W. Tew, later a brevet brigadier general, and fought at Bull Run that July. Members who could not go were designated the Old Guard and garrisoned Fort Adams at the mouth of Newport Harbor from April to May 1861, after which the fort became the temporary home of the United States Naval Academy. In 1862 the company guarded Lovell General Hospital at Portsmouth Grove.
Because the company declined to join the National Guard after the Dick Act of 1903, choosing to keep the right to elect its own officers, it was never called into Federal service in the First World War. It was called into state service instead, guarding a railroad bridge between Portsmouth and Tiverton from April to June 1917. The colonial style uniforms worn today descend from historic reproductions bought for the 1913 centennial trip to Put-in-Bay, a journey on which many members came down with food poisoning.
The Building on Clarke Street and the Fire of 1906
Audley Clarke donated the land in 1834, and the Greek Revival armory went up in 1835 under master stonemason Alexander McGregor, a Scot who had come to the United States in 1825 to work on Fort Adams. The building was extended roughly fifty feet west around 1875. A fire in 1906 caused heavy damage, and when the armory was rebuilt later the same year the second story was added. Any visitor looking at the facade is therefore looking at three distinct construction campaigns stacked on one footprint.
Uniforms of Fifty Nations and Four Revere Cannons
The museum inside holds military uniforms from more than fifty countries, including garments worn by Medal of Honor recipient General David M. Shoup, General Colin Powell, General Creighton Abrams, General William Westmoreland, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral Cameron Winslow, Colonel Katherine Amelia Towle, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, King Hussein of Jordan, Prince Philip and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.
The artillery on display includes four bronze cannons cast for the state of Rhode Island by Paul Revere in 1798, guns the company still fires at ceremonial events. There is also a portrait of George Washington by Jane Stuart, daughter of Gilbert Stuart. A letter from Washington to the company is held at the Museum of Newport History rather than at the armory itself.
No Ghost on the Record at 23 Clarke Street
Plenty of Newport buildings carry well circulated ghost stories. This one does not, at least not in any account available here. The historical material describes a fire, a long combat lineage, dormant decades and a revival in the early 1960s under tobacco heir Louis Lorillard, but it records no apparitions, no unexplained sounds and no employee or visitor encounters. Stating that plainly matters more than manufacturing atmosphere. A 1741 charter, a burned and rebuilt armory and cannons cast by Paul Revere are the kind of ingredients that attract legend, and it would be easy to assume a haunting has attached itself here. Nothing in the record says one has.
Seeing the Armory in Person
The armory stands at 23 Clarke Street in Newport, within the dense historic core of the city, and it houses the company’s museum. Opening arrangements are not stated in the material used for this entry, so check ahead before making a trip specifically to see the collection. The company remains very active in ceremonial life and is often easier to catch outdoors than indoors: it fires a 21-gun salute to the nation every 4 July at noon in Washington Square, and it appears at the Gaspee Days Parade in Pawtuxet Village, the Summer Pops Concert in Westerly and the June Day election ceremony of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts in Boston. The company served as honor guard to Queen Elizabeth II during her July 1976 visit to Newport and marked its 275th anniversary in 2016.
Address: 23 Clarke Street, Newport, RI
Sources
- National Park Service
- newportartillery.org
- books.google.com
- geohack.toolforge.org
- Wikipedia: Artillery Company of Newport
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