Introduction

The Directory for Traveling Friends was conceived of by Sally Rickerman, a member of Mill Creek Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and the FGC Advancement and Outreach Committee. Sally recalled hearing from her father of how important Quaker visitors were to the small Quaker community in Kansas where he lived. She realized that in today’s world it is no longer easy to find other Friends when traveling. You can no longer just go to the neighborhood around the meeting house. The Directory was intended to make it easier for Friends to connect with each other in their journeys away from home, and the first edition appeared in 1978.

Over the years since then it has worked just as Sally hoped it would. Many hosts and travelers have written us with comments about the joys they have experienced getting to know Friends from other yearly meetings, and many Friends attest to the value of the increased understanding and spiritual nurture that result from staying among Friends from all branches of the Religious Society. Because we have received so many wonderful stories, you will find them sprinkled throughout this introduction.

This useful directory provides information about home hospitality or camping space available to Friends traveling for business, recreation, meeting visitation or Quaker service. One of the unique aspects of the Directory is how it builds on the long history of the “traveling minutes ” or letters of introduction from a home meeting carried by traveling Friends. Carrying such a document from your monthly meeting strengthens the links between Friends around the world. It also provides your hosts with an assurance of your connection with the Religious Society of Friends and your willingness to follow the guidelines of the Directory.

The 2007 Directory is supplied as an 8 1/2 x 11 staple-bound booklet. (The bound printed version will no longer be available.) This allows us to print only as many copies as are ordered at any given time, thus saving paper and trees. It also allows us to keep the Directory current by adding and deleting immediately. The Directory is priced to cover its costs and is produced as a service to Friends. We no longer include listings in the Directory for organizations, meetings and bed and breakfasts where there are fees, and you will note that we have reduced the amount of information about each host compared to previous directories. We did this to conserve space and paper.

We have not yet thought of a creative way to communicate changes in the Directory to meetings and individual Friends who use it for travel. We rely on hosts to update us of changes in their contact information. Because information does sometimes go out of date, please plan ahead and communicate with host Friends well in advance of a trip.

Hosts are listed alphabetically by state and then nearest city. International listings are sorted by country and nearest city. Though Friends report this is not a perfect system, we hope this provides easy access in most cases. Other systems have been suggested and investigated and were found to be too difficult to institute. Please note our database does not allow listing the range of states or countries which may change mid page. For example, page 2 has AK for Alaska but has one listing for AK, one for AL and one for AR.