New Thought, High Watch Farm and Alcoholics Anonymous

In 1939 the farm was bought and was operated by a philanthropist and heiress from the Winthrop and Stuyvesant families, Etheldred F. Folsom, who was a devotee of Emma Curtis Hopkins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Watch_Recovery_Center
 

Marty Mann, Bill and Lois Wilson made their first visit to Joy Farm on November 4, 1939 at the encouragement of Nona Wyman. Joy Farm, was then run by Ethelred Folsom who like to call herself Sister Francis. She was a remarkable woman whose generosity provided a home to all in need of healing and spiritual sustenance. Because her own beliefs aligned with the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, she offered the farm to Bill Wilson to carry out the work of AA. Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, established High Watch Farm in 1940 as the first 12 Step treatment center in the world.

Marty Mann would later describe their arrival, "There was something there, something that was really palpable that you could feel and every one of us felt it. To say that we fell in love with it, is not to use the right terminology at all. We were engulfed...What is at the Farm was already at the Farm before we ever found it. It found us, in my opinion." Bill W. is famously known for describing the spiritual atmosphere upon their arrival as being so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

Sister Francis was born into a well educated, affluent family with the given name of Ethelred Frances Folsom. She was most often called Sister Francis because of her affinity for the life and prayer of St. Francis. Sister Francis identified herself as a book illustrator and a landscape artist. Today, she is better known as a visionary and healer.

Sister Frances was born Etheldred Frances Folsom (1872 -1963) to

George Winthrop Folsom (1846-1915) and Frances Elizabeth Fuller (1848 – 1928).

Her siblings were       

Helen Stuyvesant ( 1868-1942)
George Winthrop (1869-1875)
William Fuller (1871-1875)
George (1875-1876)
Margaret Winthrop (1876-1946)
Maud Christine(1880-1947)
 Winifred (1882-????)
Georgette (1883-1972)
Frances Constance (1885-1967)

https://www.ourfamtree.org/browse.php/George-Winthrop-Folsom/p568114

Two interrelated themes stand out in Sister Francis’s life and writings:
practical service to those in need of healing, and,
the desire to let ’the real Christ self shine through’.

As she practiced healing, Sister Francis disagreed with the revivalist tenet of a man as a sinner. She wrote that it wasn't easy for good “to manifest when they all think themselves sinners. It makes me realize more than ever the necessity of getting away from the teaching of evil and sin and fastening our minds on being sons of God.” She chose to live day to day and express all the joy she could.

With a vision of creating a place of retreat for anyone in need of healing, Sister Francis purchased farmland in Kent, CT in 1926. She named it Joy Farm. Joy Farm’s oldest building, an 18th century farmhouse, was called the Mother House. Sister Francis designated one room for a chapel, providing both healing and worship services. The Mother House offered "love, companionship, comforting, pity and tenderness" to all who came. Today, this building remains the spiritual center of High Watch housing the Chapel and offering comfort to all in need of healing.

Sister Francis was a disciple of Emma Curtis Hopkins, the “teacher of Teachers”. Like Hopkins, Sister Francis believed the Highest to be found in the teachings of all religions. Her reading ranged from The Fellowship of Silence, to Cosmic Consciousness, to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Her books on Catholicism, meditation, yoga, mysticism, and spiritualism remain at High Watch today.

When Emma Curtis Hopkins died in 1925, her sister Estelle Carpenter, nee Estelle Curtis, inherited the rights to her writings. To ensure that Hopkins writings remained available to others, Estelle Carpenter along with New Thought disciples, Sister Francis and Morrison P. Helling, signed papers incorporating the Ministry of the High Watch at Joy Farm in 1928. The role of the Ministry was to preserve the writings of Emma Curtis Hopkins and provide a simple and rustic retreat for body and soul of those in need of spiritual sustenance. http://highwatchrecovery.com/