Public Universal Friend | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Jemima Wilkinson (1752-11-29)November 29, 1752[3][4] |
| Died | July 1, 1819(1819-07-01) (aged 66)[5][6] |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Preacher |
ThePublic Universal Friend[a] (bornJemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) was an American preacher born inCumberland, Rhode Island, toQuaker parents. After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as agenderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns. Inandrogynous clothes, the Friend preached throughout thenortheastern United States, attracting many followers who became theSociety of Universal Friends.[7]
The Friend's theology was broadly similar to that of most Quakers. The Friend stressedfree will, opposedslavery, and supportedsexual abstinence. The most committed members of the Society of Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households and community. In the 1790s, members of the Society acquired land inWestern New York where they formed the town ofJerusalem nearPenn Yan, New York. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist by the 1860s. Many writers[who?] have portrayed the Friend as a woman, and either a manipulative fraudster, or a pioneer forwomen's rights; others[who?] have viewed the Friend astransgender ornon-binary and a figure intrans history.
Wilkinson, who would later become the Public Universal Friend, was born on November 29, 1752, inCumberland, Rhode Island, as the eighth child of Amy (or Amey, née Whipple) and Jeremiah Wilkinson,[b][3][4][8]: 11–12 becoming the fourth generation of the family to live in America.[9] The child was given the name Jemima afterJemima, one of the biblicalJob's daughters.[10] Wilkinson's great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was an officer in the army ofCharles I who had emigrated fromEngland around 1650[11] and was active in colonial government. Jeremiah Wilkinson was a cousin ofStephen Hopkins, the colony's longtime governor and signer of theDeclaration of Independence.[9] Jeremiah attended traditional worship with theSociety of Friends (the Quakers) at theSmithfield Meeting House.[9] Early biographerDavid Hudson says that Amy was also a member of the Society for many years,[8]: 9 while later biographer Herbert Wisbey finds no evidence of that, but quotesMoses Brown as saying the child was "born such" because of Jeremiah's affiliation.[9] Amy died when Wilkinson was 12 or 13 in 1764, shortly after giving birth to a twelfth child.[9][12]
Wilkinson had fine black hair and eyes,[13] and from an early age was strong and athletic,[9][7] becoming an adept equestrian as a child, remaining so in adulthood,[9][7] and liking spirited horses and ensuring that animals received good care.[14][15] An avid reader,[c] Wilkinson could quote long passages of the Bible and prominent Quaker texts from memory.[16][12][7] Little else is reliably known about Wilkinson's childhood; some early accounts such as Hudson's describe Wilkinson as being fond of fine clothes and averse to labor, but there is no contemporaneous evidence of this and Wisbey considers it doubtful.[8]: 11–12 [9] Biographer Paul Moyer says it may have been invented to fit a then-common narrative that people who experienced dramatic religious awakenings were formerlyprofligate sinners.[12]
In the mid-1770s, Wilkinson began attending meetings inCumberland withNew Light Baptists who had formed as part of theGreat Awakening and emphasized individual enlightenment,[17] and stopped attending meetings of the Society of Friends – being disciplined for that in February 1776 and disowned by the Smithfield Meeting in August.[17][18][19][20] Wilkinson's sister Patience was dismissed at the same time for having an illegitimate child; brothers Stephen and Jeptha had been dismissed by thepacifistic Society in May 1776 for training for military service.[17][21] Amid these family disturbances and the broader ones of theAmerican Revolutionary War, dissatisfied with the New Light Baptists and shunned by mainstream Quakers, Wilkinson faced much stress in 1776.[22][23]
In October 1776 Wilkinson contracted an epidemic disease, most likelytyphus, and was bedridden and near death with a high fever.[24][23] The future preacher's family summoned a doctor fromAttleboro, six miles away, and neighbors kept up a death-watch at night.[24][23] The fever broke after several days.[25][26] The Friend later reported that Wilkinson had died, receiving revelations from God through twoarchangels who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone".[d][25][26][27] The Friend further said that Wilkinson's soul had ascended to heaven and the body had been reanimated with a new spirit charged by God with preaching his word, that of the "Publick Universal Friend",[28][29][30] describing that name in the words ofIsaiah 62:2 as "a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named".[31] The name referenced the designation the Society of Friends used for members who traveled from community to community to preach, "Public Friends".[31][32] In the 18th and 19th centuries, some writers[who?] said that Wilkinson didbriefly die during the illness, or even was dead for an extended time before rising dramatically from a coffin, while others[who?] suggested that the entire illness was feigned. Accounts by the doctor and other witnesses state that the illness was real, but none of them say that Wilkinson died.[24][23]
From that time on, the Friend refused to answer to "Jemima Wilkinson",[33][34] ignoring or chastising those who insisted on using it.[c][38] Hudson says that when visitors asked if it was the name of the person they were addressing, the Friend simply quotedLuke 23:3 ("thou sayest it").[8]: 118 Identifying as neither male nor female,[28][29][30] the Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes; they referred only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F.", and many avoided gender-specific pronouns even in private diaries,[39][38] while others usedhe.[40] When someone asked if the Friend was male or female, the preacher replied "I am that I am",[41][42] saying the same thing to a man who criticized the Friend's manner of dress (adding, in the latter case, "there is nothing indecent or improper in my dress or appearance; I am not accountable to mortals").[43][44]
The Friend dressed in a manner perceived to be either androgynous or masculine,[45][46][47] in long, loose clerical robes which were most often black,[48] and wore a white or purplekerchief orcravat around the neck like men of the time.[49][46] The preacher did not wear a hair-cap indoors, like women of the era,[50][46] and outdoors wore broad-brimmed, low-crownedbeaver hats of a style worn by Quaker men.[35][45] Accounts of the Friend's "feminine-masculine tone of voice" varied;[47] some hearers described it as "clear and harmonious", or said the preacher spoke "with ease and facility", "clearly, though without elegance"; others described it as "grum and shrill", or like a "kind of croak, unearthly and sepulchral".[50][47] The Friend was said to move easily, freely, and modestly,[51] and was described byEzra Stiles as "decent & graceful & grave".[52][53]
The Friend began to travel and preach throughoutRhode Island,Connecticut,Massachusetts, andPennsylvania accompanied by brother Stephen and sisters Deborah, Elizabeth, Marcy,[e] and Patience, all of whom were disowned by the Society of Friends.[55][56] Early on, the Public Universal Friend preached that people needed to repent of their sins and be saved before an imminentDay of Judgment.[57][58] According to Abner Brownell, the preacher predicted that the fulfillment of some prophecies ofRevelation would begin around April 1780, 42 months after the Universal Friend began preaching, and interpretedNew England's Dark Day in May 1780 as fulfillment of that prediction.[59][60] According to a Philadelphia newspaper, later followers Sarah Richards and James Parker believed themselves to be thetwo witnesses mentioned in Revelation and accordingly woresackcloth for a time.[61]
The Friend did not bring a Bible to worship meetings, which were initially held outdoors or in borrowed meeting houses,[62] but preached long sections of the scriptures from memory.[16][12][7] The meetings attracted large audiences, including some who formed a congregation of "Universal Friends", making the Friend the first American to found a religious community.[63] These followers included roughly equal numbers of women and men who were predominantly under 40.[64] Most were from Quaker backgrounds, though mainstream Quakers discouraged and disciplined members for attending meetings with the Friend.[65] Indeed, the Society of Friends had disowned the Friend, disapproving of whatWilliam Savery considered "pride and ambition to distinguish [them]self from the rest of mankind".[7]Free Quakers, disowned by the main Society of Friends for participating in the American War of Independence, were particularly sympathetic and opened meeting houses to the Universal Friends, appreciating that many of them had also sympathized with the Patriot cause, including members of the Friend's family.[66]
Popular newspapers and pamphlets covered the Friend's sermons in detail by the mid-1780s,[67][68] with several Philadelphia newspapers being particularly critical; they fomented enough opposition that noisy crowds gathered outside each place the preacher stayed or spoke in 1788.[14] Most papers focused more on the preacher's ambiguous gender than on theology,[67][68] which was broadly similar to the teachings of most Quakers;[69][70] one person who heard the Friend in 1788 said "from common report I expected to hear something out of the way in doctrine, which is not the case, in fact [I] heard nothing but what is common among preachers" in mainstream Quaker churches.[71] The Friend's theology was so similar to that of the mainstream Quakers' that one of two published works associated with the preacher was a plagiarism ofIsaac Penington'sWorks because, according to Abner Brownell, the Friend felt that the sentiments would have more resonance if republished in the name of the Universal Friend.[72] The Universal Friends also used language similar to that of the Society of Friends, usingthee andthou instead of the more formal singularyou.[19][20][18]
The Public Universal Friend rejected the ideas ofpredestination andelection, held that anyone, regardless of gender, could gain access to God's light and that God spoke directly to individuals who hadfree will to choose how to act and believe, and believed in the possibility ofuniversal salvation.[69][70] Calling for the abolition of slavery,[73][74][75] the Friend persuaded followers who held people in slavery to free them.[76][77] Several members of the congregation of Universal Friends were black, and they acted as witnesses formanumission papers.[76][77] The Friend preached humility[78] and hospitality towards everyone;[79] kept religious meetings open to the public, and housed and fed visitors, including those who came only out of curiosity[79] and indigenous people, with whom the preacher generally had a cordial relationship.[80] The Friend had few personal possessions, given mainly by followers, and never held anyreal property except in trust.[c][81][82]
The Friend preached sexual abstinence and disfavored marriage but did not see celibacy as mandatory and accepted marriage, especially as preferable to breaking abstinence outside of wedlock.[83] Most followers did marry, but the portion who did not was significantly above the national average of the time.[64] The preacher also held that women should "obey God rather than men",[82] and the most committed followers included roughly four dozen unmarried women known as the Faithful Sisterhood who took on leading roles of the sort which were often reserved to men.[84] The portion of households headed by women in the Society's settlements (20%) was much higher than in surrounding areas.[85]
Around 1785, the Friend met Sarah and Abraham Richards. The Richards' unhappy marriage ended in 1786 when Abraham died on a visit to the Friend. Sarah and her infant daughter took up residence with the Friend, adopted a similarly androgynous hairstyle, dress, and mannerisms (as did a few other close female friends), and came to be called Sarah Friend.[86][47] The Friend entrusted Richards with holding the society's property in trust,[87] and sent her to preach in one part of the country when the Friend was in another.[86][88] Richards had a large part in planning and building the house in which she and the preacher lived in the town of Jerusalem,[89] and when she died in 1793, she left her child to the Friend's care.[90][91]
In October 1794, the Friend and several followers dined withThomas Morris (son of financierRobert Morris) inCanandaigua at the invitation ofTimothy Pickering, and accompanied him to talks with theIroquois aimed at producing theTreaty of Canandaigua. With Pickering's permission and an interpreter, the Friend gave a speech to the US government officials and Iroquois chiefs about "the Importance of Peace & Love", which was liked by the Iroquois.[92][93]
In the mid-1780s, the Universal Friends began to plan a town for themselves in western New York.[94] By late 1788, vanguard members of the Society had established a settlement in theGenesee River area; by March 1790, it was ready enough that the rest of the Universal Friends set out to join it,[94][95] making it the largest non-Native community in western New York.[96][97] However, problems arose. James Parker spent three weeks in 1791 petitioning the governor and land office of New York on behalf of the Society to get a title to the land that the Friends had settled,[98] but while most of the buildings and other improvements that the Universal Friends made were to the east of the initialPreemption Line and thus in New York, when the line was resurveyed in 1792 at least 25 homes and farms were now west of it, outside the area granted by New York, and residents were forced to repurchase their lands fromthe Pulteney Association.[99][100] The town, which had been known as the Friend's Settlement, therefore came to be called TheGore.[101]
Furthermore, the lands were in thetract on which Phelps and Gorham defaulted which was resold to financier Robert Morris and then to the Pulteney Association, absentee British speculators.[99][100] Each change of hands drove prices higher, as did an influx of new settlers attracted by the Society's improvements to the area.[99][100] The community lacked a solid title to enough land for all its members, and some left.[98] Others wanted to profit by taking ownership of the land for themselves, including Parker and William Potter.[102] To address the first of these issues, members of the Society of Universal Friends had secured some alternative sites. Abraham Dayton acquired a large area of land in Canada from GovernorJohn Graves Simcoe, though Sarah Richards persuaded the Friend not to move so far.[98] Separately, Thomas Hathaway and Benedict Robinson had purchased a site in 1789 along a creek which they named Brook Kedron that emptied into the Crooked Lake (Keuka Lake).[103] The new town which the Universal Friends began there came to be calledJerusalem.
The second issue, however, came to a head in the fall of 1799.[104] Judge William Potter,Ontario County magistrate James Parker, and several disillusioned former followers led several attempts to arrest the Friend for blasphemy,[105] which some writers argue was motivated by disagreements over land ownership and power.[106][104] An officer tried to seize the Friend while riding with Rachel Malin in the Gore, but the Friend, a skilled horse-rider, escaped.[105] The officer and an assistant later tried to arrest the preacher at home in Jerusalem, but the women of the house drove the men off and tore their clothes.[105] A third attempt was carefully planned by a posse of 30 men who surrounded the home after midnight, broke down the door with an ax, and intended to carry the preacher off in an oxcart.[105][104] A doctor who had come with the posse stated that the Friend was in too poor a state of health to be moved, and they made a deal that the Friend would appear before an Ontario county court in June 1800, but not before Justice Parker.[105][107] When the Friend appeared before the court, it ruled that no indictable offense had been committed, and invited the preacher to give a sermon to those in attendance.[105][107][108]
The Public Universal Friend's health had been declining since the turn of the century; by 1816, the preacher had begun to suffer from a painfuledema but continued to receive visitors and give sermons.[109][110] The Friend gave a final regular sermon in November 1818 and preached for the last time at the funeral of sister Patience Wilkinson Potter in April 1819.[109][110]
The Friend died on July 1, 1819; the congregation's death book records "25 minutes past 2 on the Clock, The Friend went from here."[109][110] In accordance with the Friend's wishes, only a regular meeting and no funeral service was held afterwards.[109] The body was placed in a coffin with an oval glass window set into its top and interred four days after death in a thick stone vault in the cellar of the Friend's house.[111][112] Several years later, the coffin was removed and buried in an unmarked grave in accordance with the preacher's preference.[113] Obituaries appeared in papers throughout the eastern United States.[111] Close followers remained faithful,[114] but they too died over time; the congregation's numbers dwindled due to their inability to attract new converts amid a number of legal and religious disagreements. The Society of Universal Friends disappeared by the 1860s.[113][115]
TheFriend's Home and temporary burial chamber stands in the town of Jerusalem, and it is included on theNational Register of Historic Places.[116] It is believed to be located on the same branch of Keuka Lake as the birthplace of Seneca chiefRed Jacket,[117] but his birthplace is disputed. TheYates County Genealogical and Historical Society's museums in Penn Yan exhibit the Friend's portrait, Bible, carriage, hat, saddle, and documents from the Society of Universal Friends.[116][118][119] As late as the 1900s, inhabitants ofLittle Rest, Rhode Island, called a species ofsolidagoJemima weed because its appearance in the town coincided with the preacher's first visit to the area in the 1770s.[59][120]
The Friend and followers were pioneers of the area betweenSeneca andKeuka lakes. The Society of Universal Friends erected a grain mill inDresden.[121]
Although the Public Universal Friend identified as genderless, neither a man nor a woman, many writers have portrayed the preacher as a woman, and either a fraudulent schemer who deceived and manipulated followers or a pioneering leader who founded several towns in which women were empowered to take on roles often reserved to men.[122] The first view was taken by many writers in the 18th and 19th centuries, including David Hudson, whose hostile and inaccurate biography (written to influence a court case over the Society's land) was long influential.[123][124][125] These writers circulated myths of the Friend despotically bossing followers around or banishing them for years, making married followers divorce, taking their property, or even attempting and failing to raise the dead or walk on water; there is no contemporaneous evidence for these stories, and people who knew the Friend, including some who were never followers, said the rumors were false.[126][127]
Another story began at a 1787 meeting, after which Sarah Wilson said Abigail Dayton tried to strangle Wilson while she slept but choked her bedmate Anna Steyers by mistake.[128][129] Steyers denied anything had happened, and others present attributed Wilson's fears to a nightmare. Nevertheless, Philadelphia papers printed an embellished version of the accusation and several follow-ups, with critics alleging the attack must have had the Friend's approval, and the story eventually morphing into one in which the Friend (who was in a different state at the time) strangled Wilson.[128][129] One widespread allegation which sparked much hostility was the accusation that the preacher claimed to beJesus; the Friend and the Universal Friends repeatedly denied this accusation.[130][131]
Modern writers have often portrayed the Friend as a pioneer, an early figure in the history of women's rights (a view taken bySusan Juster andCatherine Brekus) or intransgender history (a view explored byScott Larson andRachel Hope Cleves). HistorianMichael Bronski says that the Friend would not have been called transgender or transvestite "by the standards and the vocabulary" of the time,[132] but has called the Friend a "transgender evangelist".[133][134] Juster calls the Friend a "spiritual transvestite", and says that followers considered the Friend's androgynous clothing congruent with the genderless spirit which they believed animated the preacher.[135][136]
Juster and others state that, to followers, the Friend may have embodiedPaul's statement inGalatians 3:28 that "there is neither male nor female" in Christ.[135][137]Catherine Wessinger, Brekus, and others state that the Friend defied the idea of gender asbinary and as natural andessential or innate,[138][139][140] though Brekus and Juster argue that the Friend nonetheless reinforced views of male superiority by "dressing like a man" and repeatedly insisting on not being a woman.[141][139] Scott Larson, disagreeing with narratives that place the Public Universal Friend into the gender binary as a woman, writes that the Friend can be understood as a chapter in trans history "before 'transgender'".[136][142] Bronski cites the Friend as a rare instance of an early American publicly identifying as non-binary.[41]
T. Fleischmann's essay "Time Is the Thing the Body Moves Through" examines the Friend's narrative with an eye to the colonizing nature of evangelism in the US,[143] viewing it as "a way to think through the limitations of imagination as a white settler".[144] The Public Universal Friend was also featured in an episode of theNPR radio program andpodcastThroughline.[145]
Naoki Urasawa, in his work20th Century Boys, alluded in a veiled fashion to the Public Universal Friend myth: the main antagonist of the series, founder of a cult and accountable for tens of murders, calls himselfThe Friend.
