Newbury, Massachusetts
A Short History of Newbury
From a 1635 landing on the Parker River, to the nation’s oldest boarding school in Byfield, to a barrier island the whole town still argues over at Town Meeting.
1635, on the Parker River
Newbury was settled in 1635 by English colonists led by the Reverend Thomas Parker and the Reverend James Noyes, who had sailed from Wiltshire, England aboard the Mary and John, and the town was incorporated the same year, on May 6, 1635. It took its name from Newbury in Berkshire, England. The indigenous name for the territory was Quascacunquen, meaning waterfall, for the falls on the river that now carries Reverend Parker’s name. The first settlers laid out their homes near the water, then moved much of the town inland to the higher ground that became Newbury’s Old Town.
The Town That Became Three
Old Newbury was far larger than the town you live in today, and over time it gave up two of its own. The busy waterfront at the mouth of the Merrimack was set off as Newburyport in 1764, and the farming country upriver became West Newbury in 1819. Both borders exist because residents voted for them. What remained is a town of three villages: Old Town at the center, Byfield inland along the Parker River, and Plum Island on the barrier beach, each historically its own precinct with its own voting district.
The Oldest Boarding School in the Country
In 1763 a school opened in Byfield that is still teaching. Founded as Governor Dummer Academy and known today as The Governor’s Academy, it is the oldest continuously operating boarding school in the United States, older than the nation it sits in. For more than two and a half centuries it has drawn students to a quiet corner of a small town, and it remains one of the things Newbury is known for well beyond Essex County.
Farms, Marsh, and the Sea
For most of its history Newbury lived off its land and its water. Salt marsh hay from the Great Marsh fed colonial livestock, and the town’s farms and its clam flats fed its families. The Parker River anchored mills and meetinghouses, while the fishing and coasting trades worked the Atlantic shore. That older working landscape is still visible: much of Plum Island in Newbury is now the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most important stopping points on the Atlantic coast for migrating birds.
The Beach and the Town Meeting
The Atlantic that made Newbury also keeps testing it. The barrier beach on Plum Island shifts with every big storm, and protecting the homes behind it has become a recurring question at Town Meeting. In 2009 a special Town Meeting voted to spend $135,000 of the town’s own money, raised from selling town land, to rebuild an eroding stretch of beach. It is a modern echo of the town’s oldest habit: when something matters, the registered voters gather in one room and decide it together.
Sources: Wikipedia, Newbury, Massachusetts and The Governor’s Academy; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge; U.S. Census Bureau.