this photo of frazers rock aka the great rock
http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/NEReligiousHistory/Elwell-Byfield/Elwell-TheStoryOfByfield-MSWord_files/image007.jpg
is lifted from opposite page 4 of this slow loading
historical tome
http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/NEReligiousHistory/Elwell-Byfield/Elwell-TheStoryOfByfield-MSWord.htm
near the beginning of which it is identified as the
tripoint marker of the essex county massachusetts
towns of georgetown & rowley & newbury since 1838
or in a word 1838us2ma3es4genero2006
& it is thus evidently still located here
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=42.73596&lon=-70.9253&s=100&size=l&datum=nad83&layer=DRG25
town & county reference map
http://www.sec.state.ma.us/cis/cispdf/ma_counties.pdf
excerpt from text
BYFIELD is in Essex Co., Massachusetts. It is not a
town,
as so many suppose, but a parish. Its people were
never
separated from their fellow-townsmen for civil, but
only for
religious purposes.
Originally each town made one parish, but as the
towns grew
and their more remote portions were settled, the
population fre-
quently became too large and too widely scattered to
attend
worship in one place; so there would often after a
time be two
or more parishes in one town. These parishes must be
marked
off by definite bounds, so that no one might evade his
"ministry
Rate."
In the case of Byfield, it happen that the people
in the cor-
ners of two towns, namely Newbury and Rowley, were set
off in
a new parish, although many, who are so far posted as
to know
that Byfield is not a town but a parish, suppose that
it all lies in
Newbury. In fact, ever since 1838, when a part of
Rowley was
incorporated as the town of Georgetown, Byfield has
comprised
adjacent portions of the three towns of Newbury,
Rowley,
and Georgetown. Indeed, it happened that the present
meet-
ing-house was built partly on one side of the line
between New-
bury and what is now Georgetown, and partly on the
other, and
at least one pew is thus divided so that a man and his
wife can
worship in the same pew but in different towns.
As only the religious tax was assessed according to
parish
lines, the bounds were not drawn and maintained with
the same
exactness as those of towns. I have been unable to
find any
boundary determined with distances and angles until
1809 when
the line between Byfield and the first parish of
Newbury was
thus defined, and 1816 when a similar line was run
between
Byfield and the second parish in Rowley, now in Georgetown.
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