history

The First Two Meetinghouses:

America's first independent Congregational Church was permitted in Byfield 72 years after the planting of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The year was 1702. Twenty-nine pioneer families living far from their town centers of Newbury and Rowley were granted a tax abatement and permitted to gather to worship independently. The Reverend Moses hale, a Newbury native, was the first pastor of the Byfield Parish Church. Hale was the only pastor to serve his entire lifetime in the first meetinghouse.

The Reverend Moses Parson followed Hale. He was pastor of the church only two years when an influx of new believers burst the seams of the first meetinghouse. A great spiritual awakening was sweeping America. History knows this time as the First Great Awakening. In 1746 an enlarged meetinghouse replaced the 1702 structure. The second meetinghouse burned in 1833. The first two buildings combined to provide a place of worship for Byfield for its first 131 years.