[a] Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA) Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton, of Fond du Lac, a founding member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, "had strong ideas about the importance of communities of men and their significant contributions to the church" and his "influence on the growth of the religious life", according to Rene Kollar on Project Canterbury, "extended across the Atlantic".

"[3]: 4 Carlyle stated that several men expressed an interest,[3]: 6  but the project would take at least two years to select and train suitable candidates.

[citation needed] In 1908, Father Herbert Parrish, a PECUSA priest in good standing, was prior of the Anglican Benedictine monastery of St. John the Baptist in Fond du Lac.

[citation needed] It was legally incorporated in Fond du Lac in 1909 by Grafton as The American Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict.

Brothers who was ordained in 1911 to the diaconate by "an Armenian Bishop" in Worcester, Massachusetts, and received by Grafton into the Diocese of Fond du Lac in 1912.

[13] Anson wrote, in The American Benedictine Review, that after Parrish left, it "appears that his followers were replaced or displaced by a group of young men who had been formed into a Benedictine brotherhood" by Brothers in Waukegan, Illinois,[7]: 24  located outside Grafton's Diocese of Fond du Lac and in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago where Charles P. Anderson was bishop.

[14] Later in 1912, Grafton reported that the "little abbey or monastery which has been founded here in Fond du Lac has been put in good order, and a beautiful chapel [...] has been erected".

[b] Kollar called St. Dunstan's Abbey Grafton's "experiment in conventual life" that "did not survive long after his death in 1912".

Brothers' group, of about five members, was brought into the remaining part of the POCC, then under the jurisdiction Bishop Jan Tichy on October 3, 1911.

He remained in charge of the monastery until 1914, when Tichy's diocese elected Brothers as bishop, whose ill health forced him to give up his duties.

Since by this time relations between the American movement and the Old Catholic Church in England had been closely knit and the strengthening of the bonds existing between them was desirable the young bishop-elect was to have gone to Europe for his Consecration.

But World War I made such an undertaking impossible at the time and it was not until two years later that the opportunity of establishing the European Episcopate in America presented itself.

Bishops Joseph Rene Vilatte and Rudolph de Landas Berghes were both guests and Old Catholic priests would often visiting stop by or come for a retreat.

The following day, de Landas consecrated Carmel Henry Carfora as a bishop of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church.

[16]: xvi, pp16, 24 [d] The Kingston Daily Freeman printed, in 1945, that Francis "had worked among underprivileged children in Chicago" prior to his move to New York.

There in the midst of the despised "foreigners" his sympathetic understanding of their problems and his practical attempts to solve them made his mission bountiful in good works.

It was destroyed in 1945 by a fire started by a kerosene stove explosion while Francis was preparing for a service;[20][26] but by the 1950s, the documented account was embellished into a story that the converted barn "was burned during the war whether by vigilantes or act of God no one knows".

"[28] Ammon Hennacy wrote, in his 1952 Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist, that Francis invited him to visit Woodstock.

[29] "As I understood it," Hennacy ascertained Francis' denomination and wrote, "these people were not radical but had meekly followed their leaders just as many others do.

Brothers died in 1979 while in communion with the Ukrainian National Orthodox Church in Exile, but his labors and works are still a part of the Woodstock community.