Welcome to Newbury

According to Bethany Groff Dorau’s book A Brief History of Old Newbury, the area we know today as Newbury, Massachusetts has been inhabited by humans for 10,000 years. The Indigenous Algonquin people lived there 2,000 years before the colonial settlers arrived. Says Groff, “The Agawam groups that lived in Newbury were Pennacook.” The Agawam fished, farmed, foraged, and hunted throughout the area, and clammed for centuries along the Joppa Flat. (For many years, this was one of the top clam-producing flats in Massachusetts, but bacterial infection closed it down some 90 years ago. It was only in 2013 that a 250-acre section of Joppa Flat was reopened to specially-licensed softshell clam diggers.) English and European adventurers, fur trappers, fishermen, and traders were in the area by the late 1500s/early 1600s. Groff notes, “Though exact numbers are very difficult to obtain, it has been estimated that there were over ten thousand Pennacook in the Merrimack Valley when first contact was made with European fisherman and traders in the late sixteenth century. By 1620, however, chickenpox, measles and various other common European diseases to which the native peoples had no immunity had reduced their number to just over a thousand.”

During the Great Migration of the 1630s, the Mary and John set sail from England in 1633, arriving in Boston the following year. About 100 colonists traveled on to Ipswich, and in 1635, approximately 40 of those settlers asked to settle another area farther east, on what is today the Parker River. At the time, the area and river were known as Quascacunquen. In 1635, the English settlers named their new settlement Neweberry.

Among these early settlers was Reverend Thomas Parker, who became the settlement’s first minister, and his cousin, Reverend James Noyes, who became Parker’s assistant. James’ brother Nicholas Noyes Sr. was a deacon in the church, and his son Nicholas Noyes Jr. would later play a starring role in the 1692 witch trials as the junior minister in Salem, Massachusetts. Two other early settlers were the wealthy Henry Sewall Sr. and his son, Henry Sewall Jr. The latter married Jane Dummer and returned to England in the 1640s, where their son Samuel was born in 1652. The Sewall Jr. family returned to Newbury in 1661. Henry Sr., a rather rough character, would later behave very badly in public but he was tolerated by the town residents. Henry’s grandson Samuel Sewall became a judge and sat on the witch trial court in 1692, the only judge to later apologize for his actions.

Two other fascinating Newbury characters from the time with tangential connections to the trials are Elizabeth and William Morse and Lydia Wardwell. Today, the Morse homestead is hard to imagine, as it was in the center of today’s downtown Newburyport.

Originally founded near what is today known as the Lower Green, Newbury had grown so large by the 1640s, that it was decided to relocate the town center farther to the north, and to build a new meetinghouse there. Although the decision to move was made in 1642, it was not without controversy, and was not completed until 1646. The new town center was located near the Upper Green.

Newbury in the early days covered 6,000 acres, stretching north to the Merrimack River and beyond, and large investors in the new plantation were granted hundreds of acres. Richard Dummer was one such wealthy investor. His grandson William would later grant his Newbury property in Byfield to found a preparatory school, long known as the Governor Dummer Academy, but renamed the Governor’s Academy in 2006. William Dummer’s Georgian mansion is now the home of the school’s headmaster.

In its early history, Newbury occupations included cattle grazing (thanks to the abundance of salt hay for forage), tanning, and shipbuilding. Still fairly rural and agricultural, Newbury is a largely residential community today. It includes the villages of Old Town, Plum Island, and Byfield. Newburyport was set off in 1764 and West Newbury was set off in 1819.  In 2020, the town population was approximately 6700.

Newbury is blessed with several beautiful historic houses, including the James Noyes House (possibly from 1646, but likely later); the Swett-Ilsley House (1670); the Coffin House (1678); and the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm (1690).

Special thanks to Museum of Old Newbury Executive Director Bethany Groff Dorau for her invaluable help researching Newbury.