The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America

By Paul B. Moyer

Amid political innovation and social transformation, Revolutionary America was also fertile ground for religious upheaval, as self-proclaimed visionaries and prophets established new religious sects throughout the emerging nation. Among the most influential and controversial of these figures was Jemima Wilkinson. Born in 1752 and raised in a Quaker household in Cumberland, Rhode Island, Wilkinson began her ministry dramatically in 1776 when, in the midst of an illness, she announced her own death and reincarnation as the Public Universal Friend, a heaven-sent prophet who was neither female nor male. In The Public Universal Friend, Paul B. Moyer tells the story of Wilkinson and her remarkable church, the Society of Universal Friends.

Wilkinson’s message was a simple one: humankind stood on the brink of the Apocalypse, but salvation was available to all who accepted God’s grace and the authority of his prophet: the Public Universal Friend. Wilkinson preached widely in southern New England and Pennsylvania, attracted hundreds of devoted followers, formed them into a religious sect, and, by the late 1780s, had led her converts to the backcountry of the newly formed United States, where they established a religious community near present-day Penn Yan, New York. Even this remote spot did not provide a safe haven for Wilkinson and her followers as they awaited the Millennium. Disputes from within and without dogged the sect, and many disciples drifted away or turned against the Friend. After Wilkinson’s "second" and final death in 1819, the Society rapidly fell into decline and, by the mid-nineteenth century, ceased to exist. The prophet’s ministry spanned the American Revolution and shaped the nation’s religious landscape during the unquiet interlude between the first and second Great Awakenings.

The life of the Public Universal Friend and the Friend’s church offer important insights about changes to religious life, gender, and society during this formative period. The Public Universal Friend is an elegantly written and comprehensive history of an important and too little known figure in the spiritual landscape of early America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Nov 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781501701443

Book preview

THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND

JEMIMA WILKINSON AND RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIASM IN REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA

PAUL B. MOYER

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca and London

To Christine,

My own woman of revelation

CONTENTS

List of Maps and Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Genesis

2. Numbers

3. Revelation

4. Chronicles

5. Exodus

6. Acts

7. Judges

Epilogue

A Note on Sources

Notes

Bibliography

Index

MAPS AND FIGURES

Maps

1. The Universal Friend’s New England ministry

2. The Universal Friend’s travels in the mid-Atlantic states

3. The Friends’ settlements in New York

Figures

1. The Universal Friend’s Bible

2. Elfreth’s Alley, Philadelphia

3. Free Quaker meetinghouse, Philadelphia

4. A hat worn by the Friend

5. The Friends’ log meetinghouse

6. The Universal Friend’s first home

7. The Universal Friend’s second home

8. Gift from Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt to the Friend

9. The Universal Friend’s final residence

10. The Universal Friend’s carriage

11. Portrait of the Friend, 1816

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of people helped to make this book possible. I thank my colleague, Steve Ireland, who read and commented on a draft of my manuscript; his keen comments helped me to hone and clarify my arguments. In addition, I am indebted to another fellow member of the College at Brockport’s History Department and founder of the Rochester-area United States History Working Paper Draft Group (RUSH), Alison Parker. She and the other members of the group provided me with very helpful feedback on a draft of the book’s fourth chapter. My wife, Christine, suffered through early drafts of all of my book’s chapters and gave me invaluable advice on how to improve them. Likewise, my parents, who each have a talent for spotting poor prose and unclear ideas, read a later incarnation of my manuscript. Michael McGandy at Cornell University Press provided me with encouragement, useful commentary, and invaluable help in shepherding my book through the publication process. Last but certainly not least, I thank Eric Seeman and Susan Juster who read my complete manuscript for Cornell University Press; their comments and insights greatly strengthened this work.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the staff of a number of historical societies, libraries, and archives who helped me dig up sources, obtain copies of manuscript materials, or patiently answered my many queries. They include the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University’s Carl A. Kroch Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the Connecticut State Library, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Rhode Island Historical Society, the New York State Library, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Center, the Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College’s Magill Library, the interlibrary loan office of Drake Library at the College at Brockport, and the Ontario County Archives in Canandaigua, New York. Special mention goes to John Potter and the very friendly and helpful staff at the Yates County History Center in Penn Yan, New York.

Besides the assistance I obtained in finding sources and improving the text of my book, I also received help in the form of financial support. I won several Scholarly Incentive Grants from the College at Brockport that were invaluable in advancing my archive-based research. In addition, the College generously provided funds to cover costs related to the publication of this book. Finally, two former colleagues provided me with generous support through an endowment they created, the John and Kathleen Kutolowski Department of History Faculty Development Fund.

Introduction

Friday, May 19, 1780, dawned overcast and rainy in New England—a sharp contrast to the brilliant, copper-colored sunrises and sunsets that had marked the previous days. By about ten, what started as a drab spring morning had taken an ominous turn. The air grew thick and smelled of smoke. The gray morning light grew weaker and, as one witness later put it, a darkness came on, which by 11 o’clock, was perceived to be very unusual and extraordinary, and in half an hour after was considered as what was never before seen. From noon to mid-afternoon the darkness deepened to the point that people could only read by candlelight, and birds went to roost.¹

This was New England’s famous Dark Day. Across the region, darkness replaced daylight as fog, clouds, and smoke from fires set by thousands of frontier settlers clearing farmland combined to blot out the sun. The fact that ash fell from the sky (and built up several inches in parts of New Hampshire) points to the fires as the main culprit. At the time, however, people turned to supernatural explanations for this atmospheric phenomenon. Steeped in a providentialism rooted in their Puritan heritage, New Englanders habitually perceived events such as comets, earthquakes, and storms as divine punishments levied on a sinful people or as heaven-sent signs to be contemplated by the faithful. Already on edge as the Revolutionary War dragged into its sixth year, many interpreted the Dark Day as an apocalyptic omen. The Bible contained numerous passages that seemed to presage the strange darkness as a precursor to the Second Coming, when Christ would return as an agent of God’s wrath and separate the saved from the damned: Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger. … The sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine (Isaiah 13:9–10); The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come (Joel 2:31); and That day is a day of wrath … a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness (Zephaniah 1:15). People feared they were witnessing the Apocalypse—even the air carried the odor of fire and brimstone. But as they braced for the cataclysm, the darkness passed. The skies began to brighten by three o’clock, and by four it looked like an ordinary, cloudy afternoon. Though the days that followed remained overcast, New England gave a collective sigh of relief.²

The Public Universal Friend, a holy prophet who claimed to possess a heaven-sent warning of impending doom, was among those who saw the Dark Day as a sign that the end of the world was near. In the preceding years, the Friend had crisscrossed southern New England proclaiming that the time to repent had come and the Apocalypse would commence around April 1, 1780.³ Though that day passed peacefully, the Friend saw the events of May 19 as a realization of the prophecy and, according to several accounts, attempted to follow up this success with an even more arresting demonstration of power. On the Dark Day, a young devotee of the Friend named Susannah Potter died after battling a long illness. Three days later, the prophet presided at her funeral. But this was no ordinary event, for word had spread that the Universal Friend was going to raise Susannah from the dead. The prophet, surrounded by a great concourse of onlookers, had the lid to Susannah’s coffin removed. The Friend then knelt down in devout and fervent prayer for her restoration. The prophet’s actions evoked Christ’s miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead; however, this attempt at resurrection ended in failure. Susannah Potter stubbornly refused to come back to life, and the Friend imputed the failure to the old excuse, the want of faith in her followers.⁴ This story of attempted resurrection may have been one of many drastically embellished or wholly fabricated tales about the prophet.⁵ Regardless, contemporaries found it believable because it was in keeping with the heightened levels of religious expectation and experimentation that characterized America’s revolutionary era.

The Public Universal Friend is a noteworthy figure. In an age when men nearly monopolized religious authority, this messenger from God had once been an unremarkable maiden from Cumberland, Rhode Island, named Jemima Wilkinson. Her transformation into a servant of heaven took place in the autumn of 1776. According to a version of the event later recorded by the Universal Friend, Wilkinson died after battling a serious illness. However, at the moment her soul passed into heaven, God reanimated her body, investing it with a divine spirit to spread a gospel of repentance and salvation in the waning days before the Final Judgment. Soon after his descent to earth, the holy messenger announced that he was no longer Jemima Wilkinson but the Public Universal Friend.

The Universal Friend’s ministry spanned four decades and touched on most of the New England and Mid-Atlantic states. In the years that America fought for its independence from Great Britain, the prophet traveled and preached throughout southern New England, won many converts, and forged them into a religious group formally known as the Society of Universal Friends. The prophet’s efforts to save souls eventually led to Pennsylvania. The Friend and a handful of disciples made a brief trip to Philadelphia in 1782 to reconnoiter the city as a potential source of converts, and in the decade that followed the sect established a foothold in the state. Besides attracting some new followers and quite a bit of notoriety, the Universal Friend gained something else from this time in Pennsylvania: a determination to abandon a corrupt world of nonbelievers and create a holy refuge in the wilderness. In 1788 the Society of Universal Friends purchased land in New York just to the west of Seneca Lake, and by 1791 the prophet and several hundred disciples had journeyed there. Unfortunately, they did not find the peaceful sanctuary they sought. The sect encountered the troubles that faced any group of pioneers: shortages of food, disease, livestock-killing predators, and the years of back-breaking labor required to transform forests into farms. The biggest challenge they faced, however, was not taming the land but gaining clear title to it. As was frequently the case throughout a rapidly and chaotically settled revolutionary-era frontier, soil rights became a matter of dispute. Only after the expenditure of much effort and treasure did the Society manage to secure possession of a tract of land. More serious, the group fell out over how the property should be divided among them. This controversy took its toll, and the Society of Universal Friends fell into decline by the nineteenth century. Ongoing legal battles divided the sect, while death and apostasy thinned its ranks. The Society’s disintegration accelerated after the Friend’s death on July 1, 1819, and its last remnants had disappeared by the eve of the Civil War.

In terms of creating an enduring religious movement, the Public Universal Friend was a failure; nevertheless, the prophet’s ministry bridged the American Revolution and offers up important lessons about this tumultuous period.⁶ It highlights that the Revolution was truly revolutionary—that it was not just a process of political and constitutional change accomplished on battlefields and in state houses, but of deep social and cultural transformation enacted in homes, communities, and churches across the nation. However, as the story of the Friend makes clear, there were also boundaries to change. In particular, challenges to traditional gender norms were contested and their results often limited.

The revolutionary era was a time when prophets walked the land, people exercised miraculous spiritual gifts, and sectarian groups espousing fantastic creeds drew in eager converts. Ann Lee of the Shakers; Shadrack Ireland of the Harvard, Massachusetts, perfectionists; Benjamin Randall of the Freewill Baptists; and Caleb Rich of the Universalists were but a few of the men and women who styled themselves holy visionaries and created religious movements.⁷ The Revolution proved fertile ground for the growth of new religious sects because its unprecedented upheavals opened the door to extraordinary levels of spiritual ferment and social change. America sundered its ties with the British Empire, which not only upset long-standing structures of political authority but ultimately called into question all sorts of traditional power relationships, including those that had ranked people according to categories of class, sex, and race. America’s war for independence added another dimension of instability as people dealt with death, destruction, and the fear of defeat as well as economic hardship brought on by disruptions in trade and rampant inflation. In short, the Revolution cut America loose from many of the moorings that had traditionally held it in place and initiated a contentious process through which its people cobbled together a new social order.

The Revolution acted as a pivot that swung America away from a religious culture dominated by an educated clergy who emphasized a sacerdotal and sacramental path to salvation and toward a new one characterized by popular belief, charismatic leadership, and the idea of universal salvation to all who accepted Jesus as their savior. The independence movement also democratized American Christianity in that the colonies’ break from Britain helped to undermine state-supported denominations and opened the door to increased religious pluralism and choice. Baptists, Methodists, and other insurgent denominations grew in strength over the course of the era and dominated America’s religious landscape by the early nineteenth century. Besides providing new churches to choose from, the Revolution promoted a new religious climate. Its democratic overtones nurtured a brand of Christianity where lay control and popular forms of religious expression held sway. In addition, new and liberating religious concepts that emphasized human free will and challenged the pessimism and hierarchical tendencies of Calvinist theology arose during the revolutionary era.⁸ Religion, in turn, enhanced the Revolution’s radical potential and fueled its more democratic leanings. The linking of American independence to long-standing millennial expectations helped to transform colonial opposition from a mere rebellion against British authority to a truly revolutionary reenvisioning of American society. Besides propelling the bid for home rule, religion also helped to radicalize an internal struggle over who would rule at home, and spiritual seekers like North Carolina’s Herman Husband and Maine’s Nathan Barlow infused their resistance to government officials and powerful elites with religious meaning.⁹

The Universal Friend’s ministry parallels these broader trends of religious change and revitalization. Jemima Wilkinson, like many of the holy visionaries of the revolutionary era, had no formal theological training, and her story illuminates a process by which laypeople overturned the authority of the clergy and not only took charge of their religious lives but created new religions. The Friend, armed with a message of universal salvation and human free will, offered those who were willing to follow him spiritual independence and a clear path to heaven. Although many of her contemporary detractors portrayed Wilkinson as an autocratic figure and her Society as a cultish sect that robbed its members of property and personal choice, this portrait is off the mark. Though the Universal Friend certainly demanded obedience from his adherents, what emerges from writings left behind by the prophet’s followers is the sense of spiritual empowerment they felt and the joy and comfort their beliefs gave them. All of this is in line with the view that the Revolution witnessed the emergence of a religious culture that was of the people, by the people, and for the people. Ultimately, Wilkinson’s case illustrates that American Christianity underwent a process better characterized as one of popularization rather than democratization. In other words, the transformation of America’s religious landscape was not one where new religious creeds invariably followed in lock step with the structures and logic of a democratic political order. Instead, it was a process in which religious impulses emanating from below, though they did not invariably emphasize individual believers’ spiritual equality or autonomy, overturned elite sources of religious authority.¹⁰

The tale of the Society of Universal Friends thus confirms that the years between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries represent an unbroken era of religious ferment. Historians traditionally viewed the American Revolution as a spiritual valley between two peaks of religious revivalism: the First Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century and the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth. According to this school of thought, the Revolution filled the gap between the two revivals with more worldly concerns such as the war against Britain and the development of republican social and political institutions. A growing body of scholarship that points to intense religious activity during the revolutionary era belies this point of view. Insurgent denominations like the Methodists and Baptists had their roots in the colonial period but rose to prominence during the Revolution, while even more radical sects such as the Shakers, Society of Universal Friends, Free Will Baptists, and Universalists also came into being.¹¹

Recounting the Public Universal Friend’s prophetic career also sheds light on the complex cross-currents that shaped the lives of men and women during the revolutionary era. America’s independence movement set in motion changes that reconfigured constructs of manhood and womanhood by the early nineteenth century; nevertheless, efforts to alter standing gender arrangements, especially with regard to women, were not quick and easy but contested and halting. During the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s women experienced an unprecedented level of political activity in the public sphere as they signed petitions, created their own patriotic organizations, and took an active role in nonimportation campaigns against Britain. In addition, the stress of war propelled some women far beyond their accepted roles. There are a number of examples of revolutionary Molly Pitchers—women who became impromptu soldiers on the battlefield—and other women, like Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the military.¹²

Though the Revolution saw some striking challenges to the gender status quo, it provided few institutional gains for women in terms of political empowerment. Indeed, as Americans fashioned a construct of citizenship inextricably tied to manhood, women found themselves increasingly cut off from the Revolution’s promises of liberty. They became, not full partners in the republic, but subordinate Republican Mothers who were not to wield power in the public sphere but remain at home laboring to raise the next generation of virtuous male citizens. This new construct of womanhood certainly boosted the public perception of women and opened up new avenues for their education; however, it fell short of offering them real political equality in terms of suffrage or property rights.¹³

This pattern of conservatism and change with regard to gender roles extended to religious life, throwing into sharp relief that the transformation of American Christianity during the revolutionary era did not end female subordination. The First Great Awakening witnessed a number of developments related to the growth of female authority and a more positive evaluation of female identity. For example, the Baptists and other evangelical sects sported a number of female exhorters who took a leading role in the revival. In addition, male and female converts became brides of Christ; underwent emotional and physical signs of grace associated with female passions; and turned away from traditionally male symbols of prowess such as wealth, physical violence, and drinking. These aspects of evangelical culture devalued core aspects of masculine identity, legitimized behaviors traditionally identified as female, and authorized women to take positions of power.¹⁴

In contrast to the Great Awakening’s challenge to gender conventions, the era of the American Revolution often appears as a more reactionary period that undermined the gains in religious authority women experienced at midcentury.¹⁵ As one-time insurgent denominations entered a period of institutionalization in the late eighteenth century, church leaders (who were invariably men) systematically cut off opportunities for women to exercise leadership. In addition, while evangelical sects may have promoted freedom of belief, they also imposed very stringent rules of personal deportment on their members. This church discipline increasingly fell more heavily on women than men, reinforcing a sexual double standard that had long served as a foundation of male dominance. Finally, a remasculinization of Christianity gained momentum. No longer did evangelicals exclusively portray new birth in terms that legitimized feminine traits; instead they increasingly envisioned male converts as Christian soldiers rather than brides of Christ. As evangelical denominations consolidated, their male adherents refashioned themselves as vigorous, manly Christians fit for the demands of republican citizenship and cast their female counterparts as subordinates.¹⁶

Presenting an analysis that includes both the Public Universal Friend and the prophet’s followers and that examines religious doctrine as well as practice best illuminates the dialogue between religion and gender in revolutionary America. Though the prophet certainly did not aim to serve as a pioneer in the struggle for women’s rights, the Friend’s ministry ended up carving out a larger space for female agency. The prophet’s creed was utterly conventional and not designed to call the standing social order into question. Nevertheless, its gendered implications appear more radical when considered from the perspective of how members of the Friend’s sect sought to translate their leader’s doctrine into a set of behaviors. The Public Universal Friend wielded spiritual authority, dressed much like a man, spoke in public, and after he made his way to the New York frontier, gained use of a sizeable estate. A number of the prophet’s female adherents followed their leader’s example. They preached and prophesized, owned property, came to dominate spiritual life within the sect, and in keeping with the Friend’s practice of celibacy, eschewed the traditional roles of wife and mother. Importantly, they did all of these things as women.

What makes the question of religious practice all the more pertinent is that with the establishment of the Universal Friends’ religious community, the dialogue between daily experience and spiritual seeking only deepened. Life in the Society’s frontier refuge brought traditional relations between men and women into question, and the Friend’s leading female disciples exercised forms of power usually reserved for men.¹⁷ Beyond this inner circle, however, it appears that most members of the sect lived a life that generally matched mainstream gender roles. In addition, radical alterations to traditional gender norms among the Universal Friends elicited a fierce backlash from outsiders who saw the prophet and his sect not only as an offense to religious orthodoxy but a dangerous example of gender innovation. This reaction against the social implications of the Friend’s ministry ultimately spread to some of the prophet’s male converts, who not only abandoned the Society but viciously attacked their one-time spiritual guide.

From a perspective that privileges biological distinctions of sex over the more flexible construct of gender, Jemima Wilkinson was one of the few women in American history to found a religious sect and the first native-born American women to do so. For her part, Wilkinson would have disagreed with this assessment, for she did not see herself as a woman after her rebirth as the Friend but as a heaven-sent spirit of truth. Either view points to the dramatic transformation of America’s religious landscape and gender instability that characterized the Revolution: not only did Wilkinson test the boundaries of religious orthodoxy by taking on the mantel of a prophet and creating a new faith, but the Universal Friend’s holy persona blurred the very distinction between male and female.

The story of Jemima Wilkinson’s rise to prophethood presents problems to anyone who wishes to tell it, for it involves two beings—one an ordinary young woman, the other a masculine spirit of God—who inhabited a single female body. The first challenge is to figure out how to characterize the gender identities of Wilkinson and the Universal Friend. When it comes to the former, this task is relatively straightforward. The historical record concerning Wilkinson’s early life is admittedly scant, but there is no hint that she possessed some sort of transgendered identity or ever thought of herself as anything but a woman before she became the Friend. Thus it appears that whatever change Wilkinson experienced upon her rebirth as a heavenly prophet was driven by spiritual factors rather than some long-term struggle over her gender identity. Deciphering the Universal Friend’s gendered persona is far more difficult. Neither the prophet nor any members of the Society of Universal Friends ever reflected on this point, but they did leave clues in their behavior. The prophet’s dress, speech, and demeanor, as well as some of the practices of the sect, make it clear that they did not envision the Friend as female. Though the prophet’s appearance and actions were laden with masculine elements, the Friend was not simply a male figure but a being with an intermediate gender that defies easy attempts at classification. As one contemporary observer put it, the Universal Friend was not to be supposed of either sex and acted in ways that reinforced the image of being neither man nor woman.¹⁸ Indeed this ambiguity was not incidental to the prophet’s self-presentation but was an essential part of the Friend’s efforts to appear as an otherworldly visitor. In the final calculation, nailing down the exact nature of the Public Universal Friend’s gender identity is not essential, for the key to unlocking the meaning of the Friend’s ministry does not lie in divining the prophet’s sense of self but understanding how others interpreted and acted on the heavenly messenger’s creed.

The second challenge in recounting the tale of the Universal Friend is a matter of language. More specifically, the problem emerges whether to use the feminine pronouns she and her or the masculine ones, he and him, when discussing the prophet. Using the feminine forms implicitly denies a belief devoutly held by Society of Universal Friends and their leader: that Jemima Wilkinson had been transformed into a heaven-sent masculine spirit. Put another way, such an authorial decision would implicitly give the impression that Wilkinson was a fake. Instead, this study generally follows the lead of the Friend’s disciples who consistently used the male pronouns he and him in references to their spiritual guide. The only exception to this is in passages that deal with contemporary commentators who denied the legitimacy of the Wilkinson’s claims and continued to view her as a designing or deluded woman; in such instances, she and her come back into use. This switching back and forth between the Friend as a he and a she is a bit awkward at times, but it certainly captures the difficulties of coming to terms with a gender-ambiguous prophet.

This account addresses many aspects of Jemima Wilkinson’s prophetic career, yet why she underwent her transformation into a holy messenger is not among them. This question has dogged Wilkinson since her debut as the Public Universal Friend, and the answers fall into three categories: fraud, psychosis, or divine intervention. Evaluating the merit of the last two explanations—that Wilkinson was suffering from some form of psychosis or that her rebirth was actually an act of God—are beyond the means of historical methodology and quickly lead to mere speculation. Likewise, determining if Jemima Wilkinson was simply a fraud who sought to deceive people to serve her own selfish ends (though it appears unlikely) is largely irrelevant to the goals of this study.¹⁹ Whether or not Wilkinson was faking or truly believed in her miraculous reanimation does not alter her historical significance nor impinge on her story’s ability to shed light on religion and gender in revolutionary America.

The chapters that follow unfold a narrative that tells the tale of the Public Universal Friend and his followers. The first three introduce the prophet and his disciples and explore what they reflect about religious life in revolutionary America. Chapter 1 outlines Wilkinson’s early life, examines the personal and spiritual tensions that led to her rebirth as the Public Universal Friend, and describes the prophet’s early New England ministry. Chapter 2 turns its attention to the Friend’s converts and develops a collective portrait of his followers in order to determine what motivated them to come into fellowship with the prophet. The third brings faith into focus by exploring the beliefs and practices of the Universal Friends and placing them in their theological and denominational contexts. With the exception of chapter 5, which situates the Universal Friends’ exodus to New York within a larger history of settlement and conflict along America’s revolutionary-era frontier, the remaining three chapters unpack how gender relates to the story of the Public Universal Friend and his sect. Chapter 4 centers on the prophet’s Pennsylvania ministry and the debate it sparked, demonstrating that broader concerns over social and gender change colored public perceptions of the Friend and his followers. Life in the Universal Friends’ frontier religious community is the topic of the sixth chapter, and it shows how religious belief propelled significant changes in gender roles and relations among members of the sect. Chapter 7 chronicles the internal disputes that led to the decline of the Society of Universal Friends and reveals that they were intimately tied to conflict over female authority and power. The book’s epilogue recounts the Universal Friend’s death as well as the eventual dissolution of his sect and reconsiders their enduring historical significance.

In sum, the story of the Public Universal Friend and those who chose to join his holy mission illuminates how people navigated the currents of change set in motion by the American Revolution. It also shows that common folk, especially those like Jemima Wilkinson who did uncommon things, helped to make the Revolution revolutionary.

CHAPTER 1

Genesis

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing

—Genesis 12:2

The year 1776 stands as a turning point in American history. It was the year in which Thomas Paine published Common Sense, an impassioned, plain-spoken, and persuasive call for American independence; and the Continental Congress, heeding Paine’s words, broke away from the British Empire and issued the Declaration of Independence. In addition, the Revolutionary War, which eventually made the colonies’ bid for autonomy a reality, came into full and bloody bloom.

The year was also pivotal for a twenty-three-year-old woman from Cumberland, Rhode Island, named Jemima Wilkinson. The immediate catalyst of change in her life, however, was not the Revolution, but illness. Chronic outbreaks of smallpox and dysentery plagued Rhode Island in 1775 and 1776, but the disease that afflicted Wilkinson reportedly came to the province when the Continental Navy ship Columbus docked in Providence to refit and disembark prisoners taken from captured British vessels. Besides this human cargo, the ship brought a pestilence (perhaps typhus) dubbed the Columbus fever.¹ It did not take long for the sickness to make its way from the port to nearby communities like Cumberland. Young and unmarried, Jemima Wilkinson was still living at home when the fever struck. She took ill on Saturday, October 5 and by Sunday was render’d almost incapable of helping herself. Her father became so alarmed by his daughter’s condition that he sent for a Dr. Man from nearby Attleboro, Massachusetts, to see what he could do for her. In spite of the doctor’s efforts, the fever only worsened and on Thursday, October 10, Jemima Wilkinson’s family started preparing for the worst.²

Up until this point, the story fits a sadly familiar pattern of disease and death in early America; however, what happened in the predawn hours of Friday, October 11, catapulted Wilkinson’s case from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Instead of dying, she suddenly recovered and rose from her bed. More startling, the young woman announced that she was no longer Jemima Wilkinson, explaining that she had died and her soul gone to heaven, but her body had been reanimated by God and invested with a divine spirit that was neither male nor female in order to serve as his holy messenger. Befitting her new state, Wilkinson abandoned her old name and took on a new one: the Public Universal Friend.³ Sometime later, the prophet described Wilkinson’s death and resurrection in a document titled A Memorandum of the introduction of that fatal fever. Upon meeting the Shock of Death, she experienced a vision in which two angels appeared with golden Crowns upon their heads, clothed in long white Robes, down to the feet. They issued an invitation to salvation, proclaiming that

for everyone that there is one more call for, that the eleventh hour is not yet passed with them, and the day of grace is not yet over with them. For every one that will come, may come, and pertake of the waters of life freely, which is offer’d to Sinours without money, and without price … The time is at hand, when God will lift up his hand a second time, to recover the remnant of the lost Sheep of the house of Israel.

The angels then informed Wilkinson that the Spirit of Life from God, has decended to the earth, to warn a lost and guilty perishing dying world, to flee from the wrath which is to come and to assume the Body which God had prepared, for the Spirit to dwell in. In other words, her lifeless form was to serve as God’s instrument in the redemption of humankind on the eve of the Apocalypse. With that, Jemima Wilkinson’s soul ascended to heaven and her body became a vessel for the Holy Spirit.⁴

The Public Universal Friend wasted no time in acting on his divine commission. In the days following Jemima Wilkinson’s alleged death, the prophet proclaimed his new identity and mission. The Friend’s earliest acts of public speaking took place in the immediate neighborhood of Cumberland, but he expanded the scope of his ministry in the months and years that followed. By the early 1780s, the prophet crisscrossed a war-weary Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts holding meetings and preaching on the perils of sin, the need for repentance, and the Apocalypse. The Friend’s labors won him a steady stream of converts. In response to the growing size and reach of his ministry, the prophet shifted his headquarters from Cumberland to Little Rest, Rhode Island, in 1778. The new location was more conveniently located for the Friend’s increasingly frequent preaching tours of Connecticut and placed him in close proximity to several of his leading disciples. By the early 1780s his following was so numerous that they formed a formal religious sect, the Society of Universal Friends, and established several churches across southern New England.

From the moment Wilkinson made her debut as the Public Universal Friend, people conjectured over what caused her to reimage herself as a holy prophet and puzzled over exactly who, or what, the Universal Friend was. In particular, they debated whether or not Wilkinson believed that her body had become a vessel for the Messiah and an instrument of Christ’s promised return to Earth. A careful examination of the period preceding her reanimation reveals that Wilkinson encountered several sources of anxiety that likely catalyzed this pivotal event. In addition, the Friend’s early ministry offers a number of clues that he saw himself, not as Jesus, but as a divine spirit charged with preparing the way for Christ’s Second Coming.

The Making of a Prophet

Before her transformation into a messenger of God, Jemima Wilkinson was an unremarkable person who lived in an unremarkable corner of early America.⁵ Wilkinson and the members of her immediate family did not chronicle their daily lives in diaries, or at

Reviews for The Public Universal Friend

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America, Dr. Paul B. Moyer argues, “The story of the Public Universal Friend and those who chose to join his holy mission illuminates how people navigated the currents of change set in motion by the American Revolution. It also shows that common folk, especially those like Jemima Wilkinson who did uncommon things, helped to make the Revolution revolutionary” (p. 10). Dr. Moyer structures his book into three main themes across seven chapters, with the first analyzing the prophet and his place in revolutionary America, chapter 5 focusing on the Universal Friends’ movement to New York and other westward migrations of the period, and the remaining chapters examining the role of gender in the Public Universal Friend’s movement and how it compared to post-revolutionary attitudes in the fledgling nation.Jemima Wilkinson was born to a Quaker family on 29 November 1752 in Rhode Island. She grew ill during a typhoid plague in 1776 and believed that she died, at which point her spirit ascended into heaven and the spirit of a male angel, possibly the Holy Ghost, assumed control of her earthly body. From that point forward, she called herself by the name Public Universal Friend, used male pronouns, and began the life of an itinerant preacher preparing people for the end times. Dr. Moyer situates her preaching within the larger framework of millennial beliefs in the period between the first and second Great Awakenings, though he argues, “rather than being thought of as an essentially secular epoch sandwiched between two well-known periods of revivalism…the Revolution should be understood as a link in a continuous chain of religious activity” (p. 198). Rather, Dr. Moyer demonstrates how the Public Universal Friend’s challenge to the gender status quo originated in the reevaluation of social hierarchy that began during the Revolution and how the attacks on the Public Universal Friend and his group stemmed from the move toward more rigid gender roles in the early republic.Dr. Moyer’s most significant contribution to the scholarship on the Public Universal Friend is his application of discourses from women’s and gender studies to better appreciate and contextualize both the revolutionary work of the prophet and the contemporary reactions to him. Regarding the outside world’s reactions to the prophet, Dr. Moyer writes, “A good deal of the attention the Friend drew was not a product of his spiritual message but of the novelty of an attractive female prophet” (p. 94). Though the world viewed the Public Universal Friend as a woman, he no longer saw himself that way. Dr. Moyer continues, “The way the prophet wore his hair not only supported his self-identification as a masculine holy figure, but also aimed to evoke the simple, honest virtues of an Old Testament prophet. In addition, the Friend labored in an era that celebrated austere republican virtue as an antidote to the luxury, excess, and corruption of monarchy; and his simple, unadorned hairstyle also drew legitimacy from this revolutionary discourse” (p. 95). Finally, in owning land, preaching in public, and leading a community in its mundane and spiritual life, the prophet transgressed the normal female boundaries and entered the sphere usually reserved for men.Though other have researched the Public Universal Friend, Dr. Moyer has eschewed the narrative-driven work of previous historians to explore larger themes of the revolutionary mindset, but his greatest contribution is his focus on the role of gender in the prophet’s world and how the Public Universal Friend challenged these roles. His work compliments other examinations of religion in the early republic, such as Nathan O. Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity. His focus on thematic issues allowed Dr. Moyer to avoid the troubles of earlier historians who, in over-relying on contemporary records from those outside of the prophet’s sect, tended to portray the Public Universal Friend in an overwhelmingly negative light. Finally, Dr. Moyer’s writing style will appeal to academics and armchair historians alike.