First Parish Burying Ground

When Newbury’s town center moved north toward the Merrimack River in 1646, a second meeting house was built on the Upper Green, and a new burying ground was established. Third and fourth meeting houses were eventually built, within that burying ground.  A fifth church building was constructed opposite the cemetery, and today’s First Parish Church, its sixth building, also stands opposite the burying ground

Buried here are the early ministers, including Newbury’s first, Rev. Thomas Parker, and many members of the Noyes, Sewall, and Dummer families. Also interred here are numerous descendants of such familiar Newbury names as Adams, Coffin, Ilsley, Jaques, Knight, Little, Stickney, Tappan, Thurlow and more. For more information, see First Parish of Newbury. Behind the cemetery is a body of water called Meeting House Pond.

Buried here is Hull Sewall, or “Hullie,” Judge Samuel Sewall’s son, who died at the age of two. Sewall wrote about it in his famous diaries, describing his journey from Boston, where the Sewalls lived, to Newbury, where his young son was staying with his paternal grandparents in the Sewall home on High Road: “Friday, June 18 [1686]. My dear Son, Hull Sewall, dyes at Newbury about one o’clock. Brother Toppan gets hither to acquaint us on Satterday morn between 5 and 6. We set out about 8. I got to Newbury a little after Sun-set, where found many persons waiting for the funeral…”

Opposite the First Parish Church at 20 High Road