Jemima Wilkinson

• Jemima Wilkinson
• Born: November 29, 1752
• Died: July 1, 1819

Religious leader and founder of a Utopian colony, was born in Cumberland, Rhode Island the eighth of twelve children and the fourth of six daughters of Jeremiah Wilkinson and Amey (Whipple) Wilkinson. Descended from Lawrence Wilkinson, an early colonial leader who settled in Rhode Island about 1650, Jeremiah Wilkinson was a first cousin of Stephen Hopkins, signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of colonial Rhode Island, and of Esek Hopkins, first commander of the American navy. He was successful at tending orchards and farming; both he and his wife were Quakers.

Named for one of Job’s daughters, Jemima Wilkinson read extensively in religious texts as a child, and may have been jarred to greater piety at twelve or thirteen by the death of her mother. She read the standard works of Quaker theology and history, which preach the existence of God’s inner light within each individual, and books depicting the heroism of Quaker women. Gifted with an extraordinary memory, she could quote long sections of the Bible and absorbed so much of the King James Version that its phrases became a natural part of her speech and writing. She did not find spiritual satisfaction in attending the meetings of the Friends, however. Stimulated by the final visit to New England of the British Methodist revivalist minister George Whitefield, she joined an evangelical Baptist group called the New Lights and was dismissed from the Quakers.

Wilkinson became ill with fever in October 1776, and her doctor thought that her illness affected her mind. She thought she had died and been resurrected like Lazarus with the purpose of preaching to a sinful world. She discarded her given name and began to call herself the Publick Universal Friend, an appellation that would signify throughout the rest of her life her commitment to action as a divine agent.

Evangelists had been popular in the colonies for almost a hundred years, partly because the more established religious denominations, such as the Anglicans and the Congregationalists, made more claims on intellect and reason than on emotion. This kind of religion did not satisfy those who hungered for emotional satisfaction, particularly at a time when small, stable settlements were giving way to the unsettling domination of commerce and urban society. The Continental Congress recognized the evangelical appeal by specifically urging revivalist ministers to support the Revolutionary War.

Wilkinson presented herself as “the Spirit of Life from God ... descended to the earth to warn a lost and guilty, gossipy, dying World to flee from the wrath which is to come.” She made family obligations secondary to religious commitment, stressing the gospel of Christ and addressing herself to her listeners’ feelings of guilt. Her ability to attract a wide audience for this message rested in part upon her striking looks and charisma. Her “discourse,” according to a French visitor, appeared to be “composed of the ordinary things of the Bible and the Fathers.”

Rhode Island was Wilkinson’s first area of concentration, which she expanded during the American Revolution to include eastern Massachusetts and Connecticut; she also paid four visits to the Philadelphia area after 1782. She inveighed against sin to British and American soldiers alike, drawing Horatio Gates, the American general, to one meeting. She also attended executions of condemned spies on both sides.

The Publick Universal Friend preached the millennium, the interpretation of dreams, and healing by faith and called upon her followers to forsake evil, in compliance with the biblical precept, “Do unto all men as you would be willing they should do unto you.” She retained such Quaker beliefs as opposition to war and slavery, and although she urged celibacy upon her adherents, she tolerated marriage. Wilkinson had habits described by her contemporaries as uncommon, such as washing each day and dressing in the manner of a male cleric; female disciples competed for the privilege of washing her clothes. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale University, and others attacked Wilkinson for “pretending to be Jesus Christ,” but she was ambiguous in describing her own status and mission and won over many who might have been repelled by such a self-anointment.

Among Wilkinson’s followers were such leading members of society as Judge William Potter of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, who was induced by her preaching to free his slaves, give up his political aspirations, and build her a headquarters. Thomas Hathaway, a prominent Tory, and Richard Smith, author of an antislavery tract, also became her converts. Wilkinson’s requirement of her followers that “Ye cannot be my friends except ye do whatsoever I command you” is an indication of the personal character of her sect. A book of the period listing religious groups called hers “the disciples of Jemima Wilkinson”; her followers called her “the Friend.”

Wilkinson came to desire a “peaceful habitation” for her sect, a settlement free from sinful temptation. Exploration of sites began in 1785-86 in western New York, and in 1788, on the west side of Seneca Lake, her followers established the first significant outpost of white settlers in the area. The community had 260 members by the time Wilkinson arrived in 1790. The land was purchased through a common fund, with each member receiving acreage according to his investment, but disputes over allotments and land titles led to defections by William Potter and others. In 1794 Wilkinson founded the township of Jerusalem a short distance away, owning no land herself and supported by a trust that a member of her group held for her. Hospitable to Indians and travelers, she helped make the area conducive to settlement.

She died at the age of sixty-six of dropsy at her home in Jerusalem and was buried secretly, leaving no successor with authority to carry on the group, which quickly broke up.

The Regional Historical Collection of Cornell University microfilmed Jemima Wilkinson’s papers and those of the members of her society; other manuscript material is in the possession of the Rhode Island Historical Society. For biographical material see H. A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (1964); D. Hudson, History of Jemima Wilkinson (1821; reprinted 1972); A. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, Transcribed and Detected (1783); I. Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America (1869); and R. P. St. John, “Jemima Wilkinson,” New York State Historical Association Quarterly Journal, April 1930. See also Notable American Women (1971) and the Dictionary of American Biography (1936).