he first church in Rowley was gathered December 3, 1639. This record, the first extant, was begun by the Rev. Samuel Shepard, November 15, 1665, the day of his settlement here as colleague with Rev. Samuel Phillips. The records in the volume continue through 1783. These records were first published in various issues of the "Historical Collections of the Essex Institute," and carried the page numbers 77-116, 103-128, 243-256, and 273-303. In order to make the numbers unique for indexing, the second segment has been renumbered here to be 203-228. No pages are missing.