Samuel Merrill, 1928, reprint 1983

Newbury in the Seventeenth Century - Chapter VI, pp55-65

A New Parish Formed

   Newbury in the Colonial period had a large area, comprising the territory now included in Newbury, West Newbury and Newburyport. The residents in the western part of the town finally became so numerous that, in 1685, they asked for separate public worship, claiming that the long journey to the existing meeting house made attendance at religious services unduly burdensome. This was the beginning of a contest which disturbed the affairs of the town for a quarter of a century, and involved repeated appeals to the General Court of the Colony. In this controversy Deacon Abraham² Merrill was a leading figure.

   The petition for separate public worship not being granted, sixteen individuals in the western part of the town, about 1689, erected a small meeting house at "the Plains" at their own expense. This house was about 30 feet square, and it stood on land adjoining the Sawyer's Hill burying ground. The contest next centered in a question whether services should be conducted by a clergyman chosen by the west-end residents, or by one chosen by the town. Abraham Merrill supported the claims of a pastor who had been chosen without authority of the town, and in consequence he and four others were, in 1694, "bound over and admonished for opposing their ordained minister, Mr. John Richardson."

   In January, 1695, the town decided to divide the town into two parishes, and Abraham Merrill was a member of the committee to establish the dividing line. But with this vote a new cause of discord arose. The town voted in 1695, and again in 1706, that the West Parish meeting house should be erected at Pipestave Hill, some two miles west of the Sawyer's Hill church. But a strong party, in which Abraham Merrill was very influential, opposed the proposed site, determined to repair the building at Sawyer's Hill, and continue worship there. In 1709, however, the erection of the meeting house at Pipestave Hill was begun.

   Abraham Merrill and fifty-four others thereupon (4 Feb. 1709/10) presented a petition to the General Court, reciting that the parish had levied taxes to defray the cost of a meeting house at Pipestave Hill, and seized the property of some who refused to pay the amounts assessed. They asked "y^t if no beter method may be found out for our relief y^t we may be Set of so far as may agree w^th righteousness & Religion to maintain our minister and ministry amongst our Selves the charge whereof we chuse abundantly rather to undergo then to haue our good ends, designs and Endeuaers above s^d frustrated and mad voide." (*) A few months later the General Court ordered that the taxes which had been levied by the parish should be refunded.

   Opposition to the Pipestave Hill site on the part of the people at the Plains led, in 1711, to a nocturnal raid by a disorderly company of men and boys, recruited, no doubt, in the Pipestave Hill section, and the Sawyer's Hill meeting house was torn down. Those who had erected the meeting house at Sawyer's Hill twenty years before thereupon began the erection of a meeting house on the dividing line between the two parishes. Again appeal was made to the General Court, and work was ordered stopped.

(*) Massachusetts Archives, XI, 306. Currier, History of Hewbury, p. 353.

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