My phone lost reception as I drove into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Vermont this month. A hand-painted sandwich board directed me across a covered wooden bridge spanning the Ompompanoosuc River. Within minutes, I was climbing up a steep driveway, balancing a tray of pulled chicken and baked beans. I was about to attend the Rice’s Mills Community Association’s monthly potluck — an event that has been going on for 60 years in the town of Thetford.
The American potluck tradition dates back to the first Thanksgiving, when hunger-stricken colonists and the Wampanoag people shared a meal in 1621. But in recent years, the potluck seems to have fallen out of favor, a trend accelerated by the onset of the internet, and punctuated by a socially toxic pandemic. The number of Americans eating alone has increased by 53 percent since 2003, according to 2023 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another analysis finds that among young Americans, the increase is 80 percent.
I wanted to understand how the small town of Thetford (population: 2,775) had managed to buck this trend and whether it could provide a road map for the rest of us in our polarized, isolated, doomscrolling age.
In a converted one-room schoolhouse, a wooden table in a small alcove was crowded with food — goat cheese crostini, a pot of fatback beans. This latter was brought by Sophie Wood, recently named co-president of the association. She told me that she was carried to her first Rice’s Mills potluck in her mother’s womb. Now 42, she brings her own kids. “It’s kind of like going to church for me,” she said.
At 6 p.m., children darted toward the buffet as new arrivals came through the door. More than 40 attendees now crowded the space. The conversation grew to a roar. Each person carried a dinner plate and utensils brought from home, a tradition that reduced the post-dinner cleaning burden.
At one table, Lee Ilsley, 81, displayed a thick shock of white hair as he bent over a dish crowded with macaroni and cheese, sliced beef and sourdough bread. He first came to the schoolhouse in the 1950s, as a student.
Mr. Ilsley, who once worked as a carpenter and a mason and raised two sons, lost his wife, Dawn, in September 2020, after 56 years of marriage. It was a difficult period.
Eventually he started attending the potluck with a friend, Barbara Woodard, 74, who had recently lost her own husband of 48 years. Now they are regulars — and romantic partners. They baked chocolate pumpkin pies for the group.
The word “potluck” was used in 16th-century England, when unexpected mealtime guests ate whatever happened to be in their host’s cooking pot. Over time, to “take potluck” came to describe a more general abandonment of control and embrace of fate.
The term took on its modern meaning by the late 1800s, when wealthy New York socialites asked “Pot Luck Club” guests to bring food as part of a broader push against the stilted social conventions of the day. The potluck went mainstream during the Great Depression, as a way for poverty-stricken communities to ensure every person could eat with dignity. In the decades that followed, potlucks nurtured the labor movement by attracting new members to union hall meetings.
Somewhere along the way we lost the tradition, and the connection to one another. In 2023, Vivek Murthy, then the surgeon general, called for more potlucks when he declared loneliness an epidemic — pointing out that it carries a risk for premature death comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This year, the 2025 World Happiness Report found that sharing meals is as strongly tied to well-being as income or employment status. “You’re feeding your neighbors, and your neighbors are feeding you,” said Karl Schatz, the director of a nonprofit, the Community Plate, that has organized 40 potluck suppers in 15 Maine counties. “Everyone feels cared for.” In Norway, Maine, he said, he noticed liberal transgender artists eating alongside people wearing MAGA hats.
People are increasingly siloed by professional or political affiliation, but relationships with physical neighbors are still important. The Vermont potluck participants told me that their fellow attendees often exchanged favors, like watching one another’s kids. One farmer even told me that potluckers pitched in with his barn raising.
Like so many New England communities, Thetford was devastated in the 1960s by the loss of local industry. But it rebounded more quickly than most, with a population growth about double that of the region as a whole. Whether a vibrant community created the potluck or the potluck created a vibrant community is like asking which came first, the fried chicken or the deviled egg.
But new concerns about the potluck’s future emerged. Just a few years ago, many of the regulars were in their 60s or 70s. Where would it be in 10 years? Organizers reached out to neighbors and asked for help attracting younger people to the event. Mrs. Wood was among those who answered the call, and helped reinvent the tradition with programming catered to families with kids, like face-painting and crafts.
Now, it’s common for old-timers to chat with newcomers, like Carmen and Oli Cullen, who moved from Elmira, N.Y., in August to take teaching positions at an Upper Valley school.
The potluck provided their first social connections. They were promptly invited to the Labor Day parade — culminating with Oli banging a trash can lid with a stick at the head of a hodgepodge band marching down the town’s main thoroughfare.
After an hour, the lights were dimmed, and the clinking of forks slowed. Organizers asked for quiet for a community photo show. There were pictures of the recently born, and pictures of the recently deceased. There were pictures of neighbors’ vacations in far-off locations, little-known hiking trails in nearby communities, people’s oil paintings and drawings. The audience oohed and aahed.
Bob Walker, a former president of the community association, shared highlights of recent renovations and upgrades to the schoolhouse, a never-ending project that association members have taken immense pride in accomplishing with little funding and much sweat.
One building upgrade was the recent addition of Wi-Fi. It had been on all night. But it wasn’t easy to know this, because there was nary a phone in sight.
Matt Hongoltz-Hetling is a journalist and the author of “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear,” about efforts by a group of libertarians to take over a small New Hampshire town. Nick Meyer is a photographer based in western Massachusetts whose book “The Local” explores life in the small town where he grew up.
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