November 4 in A.A. History

In 1939, the Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer published the second [right] and final article in Elrick B. Davis’s second series titled “A Physician Looks Upon Alcoholics Anonymous.” It read, in part,

    The first appraisal in a scientific journal of Alcoholics Anonymous, former drunkards who cure themselves by curing each other with the help of religious experience, was published in the July issue of the journal Lancet [sic]. It was “A New Approach to Psychotherapy [in]^* Chronic Alcoholism.: [sic] by W. D. Silkworth, M.D. physician in charge, Chas B. Town’s Hospital, New York City. A drunkard [Bill W.] during a moment of [deep]^* depression had the spontaneous “religious experience” which started his cure. This was the seed from which came Alcoholics Anonymous. Dr. silkworth [sic] was at first skeptical. He is no longer.

---

^*Brackets in original

	In 1939, encouraged by Nona W., Marty M. and Bill and Lois W.* first visited Joy Farm in Kent, Connecticut, which was run by Ethelred Folsom [left], who preferred to be called Sister Francis, after Francis of Assisi. A remarkable woman, her generosity provided a home for those in need of healing and spiritual nourishment. Because her beliefs aligned with the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, she offered the farm to Bill W. for the work of A.A. Bill declined, but in 1940, others established it as the world’s first 12-Step treatment center, renaming it High Watch Farm [right: aerial view].

    Marty 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 famously described the spiritual atmosphere as so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

---

^*Marty, in a speech at the 25th anniversary of High Watch, mentioned that it was late October and that Horace C. and Bert T., along with their wives, accompanied them.

In 1940, Bill and Lois W. moved into one of two small upstairs bedrooms [left, line drawing from February 1951 A.A. Grapevine] in the clubhouse at 334½ W. 24th St. in New York City, where they would live for about a year.^* Lois increased the apparent size of the room by removing unnecessary shelves and painting the walls white with red trim. She also made a dressing table out of an orange crate.

---

^*Pass It On says 5 months (p. 239).

In 1963, Bill W. attended the funeral service for Rev. Dr. Samuel Moor Shoemaker, III at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Owings Mills, Maryland near Burnside, the Shoemaker estate [right: recent photo of the manor house at Burnside]. Thirty years later, Shoemaker’s younger daughter, Nickie Shoemaker Haggart, “well remembered” something Bill had said to her as they stood together that day in the driveway at Burnside:

    Don’t let anyone ever tell you that I founded A. A. If it wasn’t for Sam Shoemaker, A. A. would never have been born.