SYMHC Classics: Public Universal Friend

This 2020 episode covers the Public Universal Friend, who described themself as a genderless spirit sent by God to inhabit the resurrected body of a woman named Jemima Wilkinson. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:03Holly Frey?

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• 1:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. Jemima Wilkinson was born on November 29th, 1752, or 273 years ago today, on the day this podcast is publishing. She became seriously ill in October of 1776, and after recovering, was known as a genderless religious and spiritual figure called the Public Universal Friend.

• 2:26Holly Frey?

  Our episode about all this originally came out on June 8th, 2020. Enjoy.

• 2:34Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson.

• 2:48Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Today, we are going to talk about a religious figure, that's the Public Universal Friend, who described themselves as a genderless spirit sent by God to inhabit the resurrected body of a woman named Jemima 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

• 3:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  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. But doesn't exactly work for the Public Universal Friend, though. The Friend 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

• 4:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 4:32Holly Frey?

  So to tell Jemima's story, Jemima Wilkinson was born on November 29, 1752, 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 Attleboro. Jemima was the eighth child of Jeremiah and Amy Whipple Wilkinson, and the Wilkinsons had been living in that area for four generations.

• 4:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 cherries, and the family was so well-known for these cherries that Jemima's father was nicknamed Cherry Wilkinson.

• 5:21Holly Frey?

  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 11 or 12, and her mother had, at that point, given birth to 12 children over the span of 25 years.

• 5:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 6:09Holly Frey?

  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 4, 1776. This situation put many Quakers' patriotism at odds with their religious pacifism. Jemima's brothers Benjamin, Stephen, and Jephtha were disowned from the Smithfield Meetings because they, quote, "frequented trainings for military service and endeavor to justify the same." Jemima's sister Patience became pregnant in 1776, but was not married, and she was disowned for this.

• 6:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Jemima ran afoul of the meeting's standards as well. It's believed that she attended a revival meeting held by George Whitefield, also sometimes called George Whitfield, during his last tour of New England in 1770. Although her attendance isn't specifically documented at any of them, sometime after that, she started attending meetings of the New Light Baptists.

• 7:17Holly Frey?

  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.

• 7:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 "the" and "thine" in place of "you" and "yours."

• 8:02Holly Frey?

  The reasoning for this was that when the Religious Society of Friends was being established, people used "the" 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 "tu" versus "vous" are used in French today. The Quakers believed in the equality of all people and used "the" 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, "the" and "thine" sound very formal, but at the time, they were thought of as the casual option.

• 8:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  By the summer of 1776, 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 siblings before her, she was disowned from the meeting in August of 1776.

• 9:06Holly Frey?

  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.

• 9:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Either way, on October 4th, 1776, she became seriously ill. An account that was tucked into the Public Universal Friends 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 1776. The Columbus definitely did dock in Providence, but it's less clear whether there was a typhus outbreak that spread from the ship.

• 9:49Holly Frey?

  This same account reads, quote, "On the fourth day of the 10th 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 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."

• 10:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  On October 10th, Jemima's family called for a doctor. This was Dr. Mann from neighboring Alboro, Massachusetts. Dr. 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."

• 10:53Holly Frey?

  The friends' account of what happened is quite different from Dr. Mann's, and we are going to get into that after we first pause for a sponsor break.

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• 11:37Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 12:05Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:14Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 13:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The Old Gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 14:26Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  As Holly said before the break, the Public Universal Friends account of what happened in October of 1776 is quite different from the one by Dr. Mann that we read before the break. This account read in part, quote, "The heavens were opened, and she saw two 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 proclaim saying, 'Room, room, room, in the many mansions of eternal glory for thee and for everyone.'"

• 15:22Holly Frey?

  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.

• 15:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 Friends' first adherents.

• 16:27Holly Frey?

  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 diaries or other private documents. Outside of those adherents, though, 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.

• 17:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 Ezra Stiles 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

• 17:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  man's, no cap, hair combed, turned over, and not long, wears a watchman's hat." In another account, Quaker missionary William Savory described the Friend wearing a calico "surplus," which is a blousy liturgical garment. Others described the Friend's appearance as being similar to depictions of Jesus Christ.

• 18:03Holly Frey?

  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 "grim," which means morose, deep or harsh, but also has connotations of sounding almost demonic.

• 18:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Friend's first public sermon was delivered on October 13, 1776, 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 the Wilkinson home and in the area around Cumberland, Rhode Island over the fall and winter of 1776 into 1777, and then set off as an itinerant minister in the early months of 1777. 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 1779, all of that for following the Friend's teachings.

• 19:05Holly Frey?

  The teachings were a fusion of Quaker and New Light 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 1, 1780.

• 19:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1778, 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.

• 20:04Holly Frey?

  One possible reason is that the Friend met and converted Judge William Potter. Potter was 57 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.

• 20:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Potters became a major source of the Friends' financial support. The judge added a 14-room extension onto his mansion for the Friends and their attendants to live in, and he housed the headquarters of the Friends' community for six years. He also freed his enslaved workforce because of the Friends' abolitionist teaching. Toward the end of the 1770s, 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 Friends, or he was voted out or lost his appointments because of these religious views that the Friends was teaching.

• 21:14Holly Frey?

  From 1778 to 1787, the Friends 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 Friends established meeting houses in other cities and towns, including New Milford, Connecticut, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By the early 1780s, the Friends' following had become known as the Society of Universal Friends.

• 21:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Friends spent 14 years as an itinerant minister, traveling from place to place, usually with between 12 and 20 followers. The Friends preached in exchange for shelter, also giving advice on things like domestic matters and farming, as well as mediating disputes. They had visited and cared for POWs and injured soldiers on both sides of the Revolutionary War. The Friends 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.

• 22:18Holly Frey?

  By 1783, though, the Friends was being criticized in print, beyond just articles that viewed their teachings as heretical or their gender as suspicious.

• 22:29Holly Frey?

  That year, former adherent Abner Brownell published "Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected." It didn't specifically name the Friend, but it was clearly meant to be an exposé 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 exposé that was written by former Shaker Valentine Rathbun.

• 23:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 publish them as a book called "Some Considerations Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects of Professor of this Age."

• 23:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  This book had come out in 1779, under the name "A Universal Friend to All Mankind." It was definitely straight up plagiarized.

• 23:56Holly Frey?

  In September of 1783, 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."

• 24:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1784, "The Universal Friend's Advice to Those of the Same Religious Society Recommended to be Read in Their Public Meetings for Divine Worship" was published. The Friend had established meeting houses 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.

• 24:51Holly Frey?

  According to the Universal Friends' advice, meetings were to begin punctually at 10:00 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 for 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."

• 25:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1785, The Friend met Sarah Richards. After Richards' husband died the following year, she joined the Society of Universal Friends, bringing her infant daughter Eliza with her. Richards 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.

• 25:49Holly Frey?

  A couple of years later, though, the Society started to experience some troubles. On January 4, 1787, 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.

• 26:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  By the late 1780s, The Friend was also facing increasing criticism and derision in New England. A lot of it was connected to The Friend's genderlessness and androgynous 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.

• 26:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  When the Friend established a meeting house in Philadelphia, it was almost immediately vandalized, which was the first time the Society of Universal Friends was the target of mob violence.

• 27:03Holly Frey?

  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 pause for another sponsor break.

• 27:23Speaker 07

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• 27:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy

• 28:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 30:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  When the Public Universal Friends selected a location for their community of followers, it was in a region that was being described as the unsettled 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 Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Friends 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.

• 31:28Holly Frey?

  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 Haudenosaunee allies. Meanwhile, the United States had tasked General John Sullivan with taking a scorched-earth military campaign to punish the Haudenosaunee nations that had allied with the British.

• 31:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although the New York Constitution forbade private purchases of land from indigenous nations, the New York Genesee Land Company, also known as the Lessee Company, had tried to get around this by securing a 999-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.

• 32:28Holly Frey?

  So when the Society of Universal Friends started looking for land in 1785, 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.

• 32:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Society's first settlement was on the western shore of Seneca Lake. With the first group arriving in 1788, 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 their holding a portion 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.

• 33:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  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.

• 33:38Holly Frey?

  Some of the society's members returned to New England over the winter of 1788 to 1789, and then came back to New York in the spring. The Universal Friends didn't join them until 1790. They had planned to do so a year earlier, but nearly drowned in a carriage accident on the way.

• 33:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  By this point, the Society of Universal Friends had grown dramatically, with new followers drawn in by the Friends' charismatic preaching. The 1790 census recorded 260 people living in the community, making it the largest white settlement in Western New York. They had also built a grist mill and a sawmill. A meeting house was finished in the summer of 1790 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.

• 34:27Holly Frey?

  However, after this initial success, the settlement ran into a series of problems. In 1790, the federal government assumed states' debts from the Revolutionary War under the Funding Act of 1790. The dispute between New York and Massachusetts about who owned Western New York had been settled with the Phelps and Gorham purchase of 1788. 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 $2,600 to being worth $86,000.

• 35:10Holly Frey?

  And whether the area was part of New York or Massachusetts was once again disputed in the fallout from the Funding Act.

• 35:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, when Phelps and Gorham couldn't afford to pay for it, Massachusetts was like, "We could take some of it back then."

• 35:22Holly Frey?

  Great, give me it.

• 35:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  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, 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 $40,000 profit selling land that other people were actually living on.

• 36:03Holly Frey?

  As the society lost control of the land on Seneca Lake, they moved once again in early 1794, this time establishing New Jerusalem on the shores of Crooked Lake, now called Kewa Lake. The Friend had started looking for land in 1792, and this time, the deed for 1,400 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 30th, 1793, and her will left the land to another prominent woman in the society, Rachel Mallon.

• 36:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Once the Friend arrived in New Jerusalem in 1794, 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 elements and avoid using gendered pronouns for themselves.

• 37:08Holly Frey?

  The Friend and the society didn't escape legal and land troubles by moving to Kewa Lake, though. In 1796, Eliza Richards, daughter of the late Sarah Richards, eloped with Rachel Mallon's younger brother, Enoch. Eliza was only 16, 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 1798, Enoch filed an ejection action against the community, and the legal actions that followed went on

• 37:52Holly Frey?

  until long after Eliza, Enoch, and the Friend had all died.

• 37:56Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then in 1799, 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 on these blasphemy charges in 1800. 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.

• 38:41Holly Frey?

  The Friend gave up most of their public speaking and preaching after this, except for services held in New Jerusalem. In 1818, 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 1777 was known and called by the name of Jemima Wilkinson, but since that time, as the Universal Friend."

• 39:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  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 19th, 1819, Patience Wilkinson Potter died, and the Friend gave their last public sermon at her funeral. The Friend died not long after, on July 1st, 1819. 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,

• 40:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  the Friend's body was buried in an unmarked grave.

• 40:03Holly Frey?

  Court proceedings in the dispute over Sarah Richards' will went on until 1828. 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 Malin'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.

• 40:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Writing in the Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association in 1930, Robert P. St. John described this biography as a, quote, "untrustworthy narrative composed practically of sensational fiction." In the 1960s, 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 aspersing her followers." Unfortunately, the untruths in Hudson's book were then repeated in other sources over the years, and over time, the most outlandish rumors and accusations became part of the lore surrounding the Friend.

• 41:12Holly Frey?

  Under the terms of the Friend's 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 1862.

• 41:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Friend's 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 Adrielle, who read over the introduction and overall framing of this episode for me. So, thank you, Adrielle.

• 41:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 42:12Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 42:42Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 43:18Speaker 10

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• 43:46Tracy V. Wilson?

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