Though nearby East Montpelier was founded by Friends, there had been no Quaker presence in central Vermont for many years until Margery and Alan Walker, along with their family, came to Goddard College and Plainfield.  Margery Walker shared that “our family moved here in the fall of 1958.…commuting to the Burlington Friends Meeting for awhile, and then started meeting here every other week.” The worship group, under the care of Burlington Monthly Meeting, quickly gathered a core of dedicated folks and became a monthly meeting in 1965.  For many years we were nomads—meeting in homes in Plainfield, Marshfield, Montpelier, and Barre as well as at Vermont College, Goddard, Planned Parenthood, and places like The Hungry Pig and Eye, a restaurant in Plainfield Village. During the winter of 1992, while meeting at a daycare center on Goddard College campus amid chickens and tiny chairs, we committed ourselves to a more permanent home.  There were many decisions to be made: should we be in town or in the country? Buy and convert an existing building or build anew? We had a small savings account set aside for a meetinghouse, but that wasn’t nearly enough. There were many ups and downs but Friends who sat together in worship found a path forward and, with a loan from Friends United Meeting and a great deal of sweat equity, in the fall of 1993 we had moved into our meetinghouse along the Winooski River.

We are currently a varied group of worshippers that practice community worship in the manner of Friends every Sunday. We originally come from across the country, and even internationally, but most of us live in Plainfield, or close to it, with some folks coming from as far away as Warren and East Topsham. We handle meeting business in monthly meetings that are held in worship.