In 1893, the Novitiate House was opened in Marshfield, Wisconsin. Since Mother Frances' main interest was to give the sisters a good religious and professional formation, she had the largest room in the house set up as a temporary chapel as early as 1893. The novitiate, which occupied the third and fourth floors, must certainly have been the setting in which Mother Frances reiterated to the young candidates what she had written in 1883 to Fr. Jordan: "I want to begin, in the true sense of the word, the novitiate and in it to fight decisively again against the enemy of all good, against my profound ruin and against the world to finally arrive at a little self-denial".