Dorothy Day - Catholic Worker Collection
St. Francis Farm Community (Laconia, NY), 1977-2022

Administrative History

The property of the St. Francis Farm Community, which was comprised of 180 acres, was first purchased in 1977 by Father Ray McVey, the founder of the adjoining Catholic Worker site, Unity Acres. Between 1977 and 2001, the property housed a series of missions, including housing and shelter initiatives and a medical clinic. In 2001, the Hoyt family (mother Lorraine, daughter Joanna, and son Zachary) assumed central responsibility for the daily function of the St. Francis Farm Community. The community was incorporated as a non-profit in 2003. In the next two decades, the community shifted focus to be a self-sustaining resource that provided support to the local community. In 2022, Lorraine, Joanna, and Zachary Hoyt left the St. Francis Farm Community in order to pursue individual career paths, and the remaining directors of the non-profit, Jill Hurst-Wahl and Sarah VanNorstrand, and the community at large were unable to find more core members to carry out the mission of the farm. As a result, the non-profit was dissolved, and all of the community's remaining assets were transferred to the Refugee & Immigrant Self-Empowerment non-profit located in Syracuse, New York.

Scope & Content 

This collection is comprised of paper documents in paper folders and electronic records in electronic folders (ER-#). While the physical records are dated from the 1990's to 2021, the electronic records were all created in 2001 or after, once the Hoyt family joined the community. Please note that because of the nature of the collection, when researching certain topics, one may need to cross-reference with other folders:

• Photographs from Screen Free Week, found in both the Photographs electronic record folder (ER-9) and the Outreach electronic record folder (ER-8)
• Stop and Think high school programming found in both Outreach electronic record folder (ER-8) and Stop and Think Display in local high school folder (Box 3, Folder 16)

The contents of four electronic folders was restricted at the request of the donor for a period of 10 years, until 2032. These folders are marked as such below.