HistoryA Brief History: How We Got Where We Are Goddard College was chartered in 1938 as a successor to Goddard Seminary (founded in 1863), a Universalist preparatory school, which had operated in Barre, Vermont during the Civil War era. The Universalists, a controversial 'liberal' sect, started the seminary as an alternative to the Baptists' Colby Academy and the Methodists' Montpelier Seminary. It served as a feeder school to Tufts University. In 1929 the Seminary became Goddard School for Girls, and by 1935 had evolved into a junior college for women.
The founding of the present Goddard College coincided with the purchase of part of the Greatwood Farms Estate from the Martin family in Plainfield by the newly chartered Goddard College Corporation. The first students, a hopeful group of forty, and their teachers began renovating in the fall of 1938. Renovation has been a fairly constant Goddard activity since then. Greatwood Farm, which was comprised of approximately 250 acres and a collection of historic buildings, has remained the home of Goddard and has been named to the National Register of Historic Places.
Read on...Beginnings at Greatwood |
