SYMHC Classics: Public Universal Friend

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Jemima Wilkinson was born on November twenty ninth, seventeen fifty two, or two hundred and seventy three years ago today, on the day this podcast is publishing. She became seriously ill in October seventeen seventy six, and after recovering, was known as a genderless religious and spiritual figure called the Public Universal Friend. Our episode about all this originally came out on June eighth, twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Today we are going to talk about a religious figure, that's the Public Universal Friend, who described himself as a genderless spirit sent by God to inhabit the resurrected body of a woman named Jim. I'm a Wilkinson. So the Friend has a clear place in the scope of LGBTQ or queer history, but the details of their story also mean that we need to handle their name and pronouns a little differently than we have done in other episodes of the show. We've generally tried to take our cues on names and pronouns from our subjects themselves, so sticking as much as we can to what they used in their own lives. And when we've talked about people who have experienced something that we might describe as a gender transition, even if the idea of transitioning had not really evolved yet, we've stuck to their post transition name and pronouns. The basic idea is that's who they were the whole time, even if that wasn't evident to other people, and even if the subject's own understanding of their gender evolved over time. That doesn't exactly work for the public universal friend, though the friends sincerely believed that Jemima Wilkinson was a different living person who had died, and that God had chosen to send a genderless celestial being to dwell in Jemima's resurrected body, and that death and resurrection were centrally important to the friend's religious identity and to the religious community they established. So in this case, it doesn't feel right to frame this episode with just one name instead of pronouns, because that wasn't really how the friend approached their own experience. The friend didn't answer to the name of Jemima Wilkinson, and we won't use that name when we're talking about the friend, but Jemima was still an important part of this story who we can't simply omit. So to tell Jemima's story. Jemima Wilkinson was born on November twenty ninth, seventeen fifty two and named after one of the daughters of Job. She was born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, in an area that had been part of a dispute between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. At one point, it was considered part of the Massachusetts town of Attleborough. Jemima was the eighth child of Jeremiah and Amy Whipple Wilkinson, and the Wilkinsons had been living in that area for four generations. The Wilkinsons were related to several prominent Rhode Island families, including Stephen Hopkins, who was governor of Rhode Island Colony and later one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Their farm was a successful one. Its main cash crop was cherri's and the family was so well known for these cherries that Jemima's father was nicknamed Cherry Wilkinson. Jemima had four more siblings that were born after she was and her mother died shortly after giving birth to the last of those children. Jemima was her eleven or twelve, and her mother had at that point given birth to twelve children over the span of twenty five years. Jeremiah never remarried after his wife's death, and Jemima and her older sisters took part in raising their younger siblings. The details of her childhood and youth aren't that well documented. It's likely that she did physical labor on the farm, and we do know she became quite skilled at riding a horse. She was also described as an attractive young woman and a voracious reader with a sharp memory. She had very little formal education, but through self study she developed a deep knowledge of Quaker theology, particularly through the writings of figures like George Fox and William Penn. We also know that several members of the Wilkinson family had disagreement with the Smithfield Friends Meeting that led to their being disowned. Jemima grew up as tensions were escalating between Britain and its North American colonies. The colony of Rhode Island declared its independence two months before the rest of the colonies did on July fourth, seventeen seventy six. This situation put many Quakers patriotism at odds with their religious pacifism. Jemima's brothers, Benjamin, Stephan and Jepsa were disowned from the Smithfield meetings because they quote frequented trainings for military service and endeavored to justify the same. Jemima's sister, Patience became pregnant in seventeen seventy six, but was not married, and she was disowned for this. Jemima ran a foul of the meeting's standards as well. It's believed that she attended a revival meeting by George Whitefield also sometimes called George Whitfield, during his last tour of New England in seventeen seventy, although her attendance isn't specifically documented at any of them. Sometime after that she started attending meetings of the New Light Baptists. Both the New Lights and the Quakers stressed individual enlightenment and conscience as part of their teachings, but the Quakers stressed the idea of discussion and consensus when it came to matters of theology and determining the scope of God's will. The New Lights, on the other hand, believed that everyone had equal access to God at any time. There was no need to discuss your conversion experience or your beliefs with anyone else or get their approval for them to be real and valid. In addition to attending these New Light meetings, it appears that Jemima was talking about the New Light teachings during her Quaker meetings. She was also refusing to use Quaker plain speech, which substituted THEE and thine in place of you and yours. The reasoning for this was that when the religious Society of Friends was being established, people used THEE and thine for close relations, but you and yours in a more formal context, including addressing royalty. This is very similar to the way that two versus vous are used in French today. The Quakers believed in the equality of all people and used THEE and thine for everyone, regardless of rank, and continued speaking this way even as you became more common outside of Quaker communities as the pronoun to use for everyone. Ironically, today THEE and thine sound very formal, but at the time they were thought of as the casual option. By the summer of seventeen seventy six, the Smithfield Friends had instructed Jemima to stop speaking out of turn. That may have also involved her speaking out about the disownment of her four siblings. She'd also been instructed to stop going to the New Light Baptist meetings. Jemima refused to do any of that, and then, like her her siblings before her, she was disowned from the meeting in August of seventeen seventy six. There are two different accounts of what happened next. One is that Jemima threw herself into religious work, including ministering to and caring for the sick. The other is that she withdrew into her room and became increasingly isolated and morose. Either way, on October fourth, seventeen seventy six, she became seriously ill. An account that was tucked into the public Universal Friend's Bible calls this illness Columbus fever, described as a Typhus outbreak that came from the Navy ship Columbus that docked in Providence, Rhode Island in seventeen seventy six. The Columbus definitely did dock in Providence, but it's less clear whether there was a typhus outbreak that spread from the ship. This same account reads quote on the fourth day of the tenth month, on the seventh day of the week, at night, a certain young woman known by the name of Jemima Wilkinson was seized with this mortal disease, And on this the second day of her illness, was rendered almost incapable of helping herself, and the fever continued to increase until the fifth day of the week. About midnight, she appeared to meet the shock of death. On October tenth, Jemima's family called for a doctor. This was doctor Mann from neighboring Alborough, Massachusetts. Doctor Mann later wrote this account quote, her case was like one other. He knew of that the fever being translated to the head. She rose with different ideas that what she had when the fever was general, and she conceived the idea that she had been dead and was raised up for extraordinary purposes and got well fast, but that she had been dead. None of her friends or attendants had any apprehension or thought of her having been dead, But she was for some time after considered by her friends not to be in her right mind. The Friend's account of what happened is quite different from doctor Mann's, and we are going to get into that after we first paused for a sponsor break. As Holly said before the break, the public Universal Friend's account of what happened in October of seventeen seventy six is quite different from the one by doctor Man that we read before the break. This account read, in part quote, the heavens were opened, and she saw too archangels descending from the east with golden crowns upon their heads, clothed in long white robes down to the feet, bringing a sealed pardon from the Living God, and putting their trumpets to their mouth, proclaimed saying room, room, room in the many mansions of eternal glory for thee and for everyone. Later, in the same account, the Friend continued, quote, the Spirit of Life from God had descended to Earth to warn a lost and guilty, perishing, dying world to flee from the wrath which is to come, and to give an invitation to the lost sheep of the House of Israel to come home, and was waiting to assume the body which God had prepared for the Spirit to dwell in. Some accounts have the word gossiping in place of the word perishing in that passage, possibly because of unclear handwriting. From this point, the Friend stopped answering to the name Jemima Wilkinson and became known as the Public Universal Friend, as well as the All Friend and the Comforter, and a variety of other monikers. To followers, they were often just the Friend or the PuF. The name Public Universal Friend also had some overlap with Quaker practices. Public friends were the Quakers who were authorized to travel from place to place and preach. The Friends stopped recognizing the Wilkinson family as relatives, although several of the Wilkinsons were among the Friend's first adherents. Those adherents generally avoided using gendered pronouns or any pronouns at all when talking about the Friend. This was true even in people's personal diary or other private documents outside of those adherence, So people were all over the place in terms of what pronouns and names that they used to talk about the Friend, and this continues until today. Most biographies and journal articles use he or him or she and her. Tracy was telling me before we even started that a lot of the pieces she used as reference made this all very very confusing. Yeah, yeah, I think there was one article of everything that I read that used like a non gendered pronoun to talk about the friend, and the rest of them a lot of them used she, and one entire book used he, which I found jarring. The friend also started dressing in a way that combined masculine, feminine, and clerical apparel. Congregationalist Ezvras Styles described one outfit this way quote light cloth cloak with a cape like a man's purple gown, long sleeves to wristbands, man's shirt down to the hands, with neckband, purple handkerchief or neckcloth tied around the neck like a man's no cap, hair calmbed, turned over and not long. Wears a watchman's hat. In another account, Quaker missionary William Savory described the friend wearing a calico surplice, which is a blousy liturgical garment. Others described the friend's appearance as being similar to depictions of Jesus Christ. The friend's voice was also described as neither masculine or feminine, or sometimes as both masculine and feminine, although some detractors described the voice as grum, which means morose, deep, or harsh, but also has connotations of sounding almost demonic. The Friend's first public sermon was delivered on October thirteenth, seventeen seventy six, so just three days after that doctor visit, they attended services at the Elder Miller Baptist meeting House and then afterwards spoke from under a tree outside the building. The Friend continued to preach from I'm the Wilkinson home and in the area around Cumberland, Rhode Island, over the fall and winter of seventeen seventy six and to seventeen seventy seven, and then set off as an itinerant minister in the early months of seventeen seventy seven. That year, Jeremiah Wilkinson was disowned from the Smithfield Quakers, and the three Wilkinson daughters who had not already been disowned, were all expelled in seventeen seventy nine, all of that for following the friend's teachings. The teachings were a fusion of Quaker and New Late Baptist ideas, along with some mysticism. Followers wrote about their prophetic dreams and their visions, and while the Friend was still in Rhode Island. Faith healing was also part of their ministry, although that seemed to have disappeared after they moved on to other areas in the Northeast. The Friend preached on ideas of equality among all people, as well as being pacifist and abolitionist, and believed that women should obey God rather than men. The Friend also encouraged, but did not require, celibacy. These teachings also warned of a coming apocalypse to begin on April first, seventeen eighty. In seventeen seventy eight, the Friend felt called to take their preaching to England and made preparations to travel there, something that required a lot of work because the Revolutionary War was still going on. Although the Friend did get permission from local authorities to make this trip and started making arrangements for passage, the trip didn't actually wind up happening. One possible reason is that the Friend met and converted Judge William Potter. Potter was fifty seven at the time and was one of several prominent and wealthy people among the Friend's followers. Potter's father had been one of the wealthiest planters in Narragansett, Rhode Island, Potter had inherited his father's estate and had become one of the most prominent men in that part of the colony. Potter had been an Anglican, but he and his wife Penelope, left the church to follow the Public Universal Friend. But Potters became a major source of the friends financial support. The judge added a fourteen room extension onto his mansion for the Friend and their attendants to live in, and he housed the headquarters of the Friend's community for six years. He also freed his enslaved workforce because of The Friend's abolitionist teaching. Toward the end of the seventeen seventies, Potter either lost or resigned from his position as a judge, as well as from other offices he had been holding. Either he stepped away from them all to focus on his work with the Friend, or he was voted out or lost his appointments because of these religious views that the Friend was teaching. From seventeen seventy eight to seventeen eighty seven, the Friend was primarily based in Rhode Island, although they traveled back and forth to other parts of New England, as well as farther south into New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Friend established meetinghouses in other cities and towns, including New Milford, Connecticut, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By the early seventeen eighties, the Friends following had become known as the Society of Universal Friends. The Friends spent fourteen years as an itinerant minister, traveling from place to place, usually with between twelve and twenty followers. The Friend preached in exchanged for shelter, also giving advice on things like domestic matters and farming, as well as mediating disputes. They had visited and cared for POW's and injured soldiers on both sides of the Revolutionary War. The Friend had also actively recruited new followers, including attending the funerals of people of other faiths who had died, both to offer comfort to the bereaved and to be available for people who might be interested in their teachings but kind of reluctant to seek them out otherwise. By seventeen eighty three, though, the Friend was being criticized in print, beyond just articles that viewed their teachings as heretical or their gender as suspicious. That year, former adherent Abner Browne published enthusiastical errors transpired and detected. It didn't specifically name the but it was clearly meant to be an expoze of the friend's ministry. It may have been inspired by the writing titled A brief account of a religious scheme taught and propagated by a number of Europeans who lately lived in a place called Niskiuna in the state of New York, but now residing in Harvard, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, commonly called Shaking Quakers. Again we always love a very long and convoluted title. This particular piece of writing was an expose that was written by former Shaker Valentine Rathbun. Brownell seems to have been motivated to write this work after the Friend excommunicated him for publishing his own book of prophecies without their permission. Among Brownell's accusations was that the Friend maintained a spy network to pass them information about other people's sins in order to bring those transgressions up in front of the congregation during services. Brownell also said that the Friend had instructed him to plagiarize previous works by Isaac Pennington and William Sewell and published them as a book called Some Considerations Propounded to the several sorts and sects of Professor of this Age. This book had come out in seventeen seventy nine under the name A Universal Friend to All Mankind. It was definitely straight up plagiarized. In September of seventeen eighty three, two members of the Society drafted a declaration of faith in part to resolve ongoing questions about who the Friend actually was. Some of the Friend's adherents described the Friend as a messiah or as a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, something that the Friend themself never claimed, but also didn't really deny. This declaration described the Friend as quote the Council of the Lord, spoken by the influence of the Holy Spirit through the Tabernacle of the Universal Friend. In seventeen eighty four, the Universal Friend's Advice to those of the same religious society recommended to be read in their public meetings for worship was published. The Friend had established meetinghouses in several communities at this point, and this book contained instructions on the structure of worship at those meeting houses, as well as lots of Bible verses and other quotations. According to the Universal Friend's advice, meetings were to begin punctually at ten in the morning, and people who couldn't attend meetings were advised to sit down in their homes at the scheduled time to quote wait four and upon the Lord. Members were to live peaceably with all men as much as possible, or to take up your daily cross against all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to speak in meetings only when moved to do so by the Holy Spirit. The Friend's advice also included several references to the Golden Rule and the admonition to quote live as you would be willing to die. In seventeen eighty five, the Friend met Sarah Richards. After Richard's husband died. The following year, she joined the Society of Universal Friends, bringing her infant daughter, Eliza with her. It became one of the most prominent people in the society and the closest person to the public Universal Friend, essentially being second in the society's hierarchy and becoming known as Sarah Friend. A couple of years later, though, the society started to experience some troubles. On January fourth, seventeen eighty seven, several members of the Society were staying at the home of David Wagner in Philadelphia. There was some kind of argument between two of the Friend's adherents, Sarah Wilson and Abigail Dayton. Wilson later accused Dayton of trying to strangle her as she slept, something that other people in the house wrote off as a nightmare. But Wilson published an account of this whole incident that later morphed into the Friend having tried to strangle her, even though the Friend was in Rhode Island at the time this happened. By the late seventeen eighties, the Friend was also facing increasing criticism and derision in New England. A lot of it was connected to the Friend's genderlessness and androgynoust physical appearance. Detractors were inordinately focused on what kind of undergarments the Friend wore, what their voice sounded like, and whether there was something sexually licentious going on within the Society of Universal Friends, which, as we said earlier, encouraged celibacy. When the Friend established a meetinghouse in Philadelphia, it was almost immediately vandalized, which was the first time the Society of Universal Friends was the target of mob violence. Criticism and persecution were among the factors that led the Friend to establish a community in western New York. The Friend may have also been inspired by a Frada cloister in Pennsylvania or New York Shaker communities, and we'll talk more about that after we paused for another sponsor break. When the Public Universal Friends selected a location for their community of followers, it was in a region that was being described as the uns settled frontier of the newly established United States of America. Of course, that was not true. What is now Western New York was home to the Seneca Nation, one of the six nations of the Hodenashonee Confederacy. The Friend was described as being fair and respectful with the Seneca people that they encountered, but we also only have white people's descriptions of this. The society's first community in New York was established in the Finger Lakes region, an area that was highly disputed before the Revolutionary War. The colonies of New York and Massachusetts had argued over whose charter it belonged to. After the war, Britain wanted to claim it for the Loyalists and their former Hodina shone allies. Meanwhile, the United States had tasked General John Sullivan with taking a scorched earth military campaign to punish the Hodenashonee nations that had allied with the British. Although the New York Constitution forbade private purchases of land from indigenous names, the New York Genesee Land Company, also known as the Lessi Company, had tried to get around this by securing a nine hundred and ninety nine year lease for it. Although the state ultimately invalidated that lease, the company had become so influential that the state had to then bring them on as negotiators when trying to get a clear title to this land from the indigenous population. So when the Society of Universal Friends started looking for land in seventeen eighty five, they definitely were not heading to a pristine, unsettled frontier. This was, as we said, highly disputed territory, and the Society was benefiting from the systemic destruction of the Seneca Nation. The society's first settlement was on the western shore of Seneca Lake, with the first group arriving in seventeen eighty eight. Their goal was to live in a truly communal way with all of the community's land being collectively held, but that idea turned out to be impractical, especially given all of these ongoing lease and title disputes over the land they were on. Instead, every member who contributed money toward the land acquisition was given a receipt with they're holding apportioned for use based on how much each person had invested, but all of the land was meant to belong to the community. Like There were no property lines around any person's individual plot of land. You could theoretically have the right to a certain percentage of it, but it wasn't defined as a specific piece of land in that parcel. Some of the society's members returned to New England over the winter of seventeen eighty eight to seventeen eighty nine, and then came back to New York in the spring. The Universal Friend didn't join them until seventeen ninety. They had planned to do so a year earlier, but nearly drowned in a carriage accident on the way. By this point, the Society of Universal Friends had grown dramatically, with new followers drawn in by the Friend's charismatic preaching. Eighteen ninety Census recorded two hundred and sixty people living in the community, making it the largest white settlement in Western New York. They had also built a gristmill and a sawmill. A meeting house was finished in the summer of seventeen ninety as well. Many of the settlement's households are actually headed by women, and there were of course a large number of women among the Friends adherents. However, after this initial success, the settlement ran into a series of problems. In seventeen ninety, the federal government assumed state's debts from the Revolutionary War under the Funding Act of seventeen ninety. The dispute between New York and Massachusetts about who owned Western New York had been settled with the Phelps and Gorham purchase of seventeen eighty eight, but after the Funding Act was passed, Massachusetts currency increased so much in value that Phelps and Gorham could no longer afford to pay for it. Land in the area changed hands repeatedly. Property values soared. The Society's land went from being worth two thousand, six hundred dollars to being worth eighty six thousand dollars, and whether the area was part of New York or Massachusetts was once again disputed in the fallout from the Funding Act, you know, and Phelps and Gorham couldn't afford to pay for it. Massachusetts was like, we could take some of it back then, great, give me it. Yeah. As all of this was going on, some of the Society's wealthiest investors decided that even though they had paid for this land on behalf of the community, they would take this opportunity to cash out on their investment and leave. This led to a bitter division between the community and some of its longtime members, as those with the most money arranged their sales without regard to who was living where or where people had built homes, or planted orchards or made other improvements. Judge William Potter, for example, who we talked about earlier, made about forty thousand dollars profit selling land that other people were actually living on. As the Society lost control of the land on Seneca Lake, they moved once again in early seventeen ninety four, this time establishing New Jerusalem on the shores of Crooked Lake now called Cuca Lake. The Friend had started looking for land in seventeen ninety two, and this time the deed for fourteen hundred acres had been assigned to Sarah Richards, also known as Sarah Friend, since the public Universal Friend refused to do business under their legal name of record. Unfortunately, Sarah Friend died after a long illness on November thirtieth, seventeen ninety three, and her will left the land to another prominent woman in the society, Rachel Mallin. Once the Friend arrived in New Jerusalem in seventeen ninety four, they lived in a log cabin with the poorest members of the community, the ones who couldn't afford to build homes of their own. The Friend had also established what they called the Faithful Sisterhood. This was a group of women adherents who were the Friend's support circle and missionary force. Some of the Faithful Sisterhood also wore clothing that blended masculine and feminine element and avoid using gendered pronouns for themselves. The Friend and the Society didn't escape legal and land troubles by moving to Cuca Lake, though. In seventeen ninety six, Eliza Richards, daughter of the late Sarah Richards, eloped with Rachel Mayland's younger brother, Enoch. Eliza was only sixteen and Enoch was not believed to be particularly cunning, so it is not clear if they came up with this whole idea on their own or if someone else put them up to it. They claimed Sarah's will had been tampered with and that Eliza had really inherited the society's land from her mother, and that meant that upon her marriage to Enoch, the land was legally his. In May of seventeen ninety eight, Enoch filed an ejection action against the community, and the legal actions that followed went on until long after Eliza, Enoch, and the Friend had all died. Then, in seventeen ninety nine, James Parker, one of the investors who had sold his land for profit earlier on, brought charges of blasphemy against the Friend as part of an ongoing attack by several former adherents who really seemed set on just taking down their former religious leader. Judge Potter was also part of this whole effort. The Friend was questioned all these on these blasphemy charges in eighteen hundred. They didn't give a direct answer about whether they were the incarnation of Christ, but they flatly denied that they had tried to replicate any of Christ's miracles. The judge ultimately ruled that under the US Constitution, blasphemy was no longer an indictable offense, and the charges were ultimately dropped. The Friend gave up most of their public speaking and preaching after this, except for services held in New Jerusalem. In eighteen eighteen, the Friend wrote out a will which provided for the society's poorest members until the end of their lives. It had been signed public Universal Friend, but on the advice of an attorney, the Friend had added the note be it remembered that in order to remove all doubts of the due execution of the foregoing Will and Testament, being the person who before the year one thousand, seven hundred and seventy seven was known and called by the name of Jemimah Wilkinson, but since that time as the Universal Friend. Yeah. Their attorney was basically like, after all of this land dispute that we have had going on for so many years, please take this step to make sure to like not give somebody else ammunition for saying that your will is not valid. On April nineteenth, eighteen nineteen, Patience Wilkinson Potter died, and the Friend gave their last public sermon at her funeral. The friend died not long after, on July first, eighteen nineteen. Although the Society's death book used the words left time to mean died, the Friend's entry reads, quote twenty five minutes past two on the clock. The Friend went from here after lying in state for four days so adherents could pay their respects. The Friend's body was buried in an unmarked grave. Court proceedings in the dispute over Sarah Richard's will went on until eighteen twenty eight. During that time, David Hudson wrote the first biography of the Friend. Hudson was a law partner of Robert W. Stoddard, who was representing Eliza and Enoch Mahland's children in the land dispute. Rather than being an accurate account of the friend's life, this was a libelous fiction meant to discredit the friend and their community in court. Writing in the Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association in nineteen thirty, Robert P. Saint John described this biography as a quote untrustworthy narrative composed practically of sensational fiction. In the nineteen sixties, biographer Herbert Wisby wrote, quote, Hudson's book should be considered properly not as a biography of Jemima Wilkinson, but as part of the campaign to get her land by discrediting her aims and dispersing her followers. Unfortunately, the untruths in Hudson's book were then repeated in other courses over the years, and overtime the most outlandish rumors and accusations became part of the lore surrounding the friend Under the terms of the Friends Will, the community's poorest members were, as we said, to be supported until the end of their lives. The last payments were made through a trust established by Rachel Malin, with the final payment from the trust made in eighteen sixty two. The Friends Home in Jerusalem, New York is still standing today and it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And before we move on to listener Mail, I just wanted to shout out to my friend Adriel, who read over the introduction and overall framing of this episode for me. So thank you, Adriel. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to. Your favorite show is