Question: Where are the original church records for Newbury, Massachusetts from the 17th century?
Answer: The records are lost according to Dr. Harold Field Worthley in his work An Inventory of the Records of the Particular (Congregations) Church of Massachusetts Gathered 1620-1805. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1970). He states the following findings "The church records antedating 1674 were reported lost in the Essex North Association's Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Essex History (Boston, 1865), pp. 340-345. The manual published at Newbury in 1896 under the title Covenant, Articles of Faith Rules of the First Church in Newbury, with a Catalogue of its Members and an Accountof its Pastors, reported the records from 1674 then in existence. Today, however, no records can be found antedating 1943, other than vital statistics extracted from histories and manuals of the church".