The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America 9781501701450

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THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND

THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND JEM I M A WI L K I N S O N A N D R ELI GI O U S E N T H US I A SM I N R EVO LU T I O N A R Y A M E R I C A

Paul B. Moyer

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2015 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moyer, Paul Benjamin, 1970– author. The Public Universal Friend : Jemima Wilkinson and religious enthusiasm in revolutionary America / Paul B. Moyer. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5413-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Wilkinson, Jemima, 1752–1819. 2. Women religious leaders—United States—Biography. 3. Women evangelists—United States—Biography. 4. Women and religion—United States—History—18th century. 5. United States—Church history—18th century. I. Title. BR1719.W5M69 2015 289.9—dc23 [B] 2015010751 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Christine, My own woman of revelation

Contents

List of Maps and Figures Acknowledgments

ix

xi

Introduction

1

1. Genesis

11

2. Numbers

31

3. Revelation

54

4. Chronicles

79

5. Exodus

114

6. Acts

140

7. Judges

166

Epilogue

189

A Note on Sources Notes

205

Bibliography Index

259

247

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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

27 82 122

Figures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

The Universal Friend’s Bible Elfreth’s Alley, Philadelphia Free Quaker meetinghouse, Philadelphia A hat worn by the Friend The Friends’ log meetinghouse The Universal Friend’s first home The Universal Friend’s second home Gift from Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt to the Friend The Universal Friend’s final residence The Universal Friend’s carriage Portrait of the Friend, 1816

56 84 86 91 131 132 137 141 154 154 191

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Ack nowledgments

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 Rochesterarea 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.

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A C K N OW L E D G M E N TS

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.

THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND

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 1

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INTRODUCTION

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

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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

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INTRODUCTION

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

INTRODUCTION

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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

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INTRODUCTION

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

INTRODUCTION

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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

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INTRODUCTION

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

INTRODUCTION

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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

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INTRODUCTION

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.

Ch ap ter 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 11

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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

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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 least no such documentation has survived into the present. As a maiden, she also fell below the horizon of official records, such as tax lists and deeds. Thus information of her early life is scant, and what does exist is open to debate.6 Nevertheless, the general consensus is that she was born on November 29, 1752 as the eighth child and fourth daughter of Jeremiah and Amey Wilkinson.7 Jemima’s mother was born in 1718 and died in 1764, when Jemima was twelve or thirteen years old, as a result of giving birth to Jemima’s youngest sister, Deborah.8 More is known about Jemima Wilkinson’s father. He was born in 1707 to John and Deborah Wilkinson in the town of Smithfield, Rhode Island. As an adult, Jeremiah obtained property in the “Attleboro Gore,” a tract of land that was part of Massachusetts till the Crown awarded it to Rhode Island in 1747 and it became the town of Cumberland. Since Jeremiah and Amey Wilkinson had the first of their twelve or thirteen children in 1739, it is likely that they married the previous year. This seems to have been Jeremiah’s

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second marriage. Records indicate that he wed a Patience Hyde in 1735, but she must have died soon after and bore her husband no children. Jeremiah Wilkinson eventually became a prominent local man: he owned a productive farm, held local offices in Cumberland, and engaged in commercial ventures such as iron production that brought him into contact with some of Rhode Island’s leading Quaker merchants, such as future abolitionist Moses Brown. Like his business partners, Jeremiah was a member of the Society of Friends and attended the Smithfield monthly meeting.9 Stories about Jemima Wilkinson’s early life paint a picture of a girl who grew up to be an attractive young woman with a taste for fine clothes and whatever entertainments her rural neighborhood could muster. In addition, they portray her as stubborn and lazy but also intelligent. Rumor had it that Wilkinson served as an apprentice to a seamstress, but that her mistress dismissed the girl after only ten months because of her aversion to work and headstrong personality. One of the observations commonly made about the young Jemima Wilkinson that later events fully corroborate is that she was not only literate but an avid reader who memorized long sections of the Bible and prominent Quaker texts like Robert Barclay’s Apology.10 All in all, the descriptions of Wilkinson’s early life portray her as a clever if somewhat shiftless youth. It is quite possible that commentators stereotyped her to fit a broader narrative tradition concerning people who experienced dramatic religious awakenings. A common motif in such tales is that of a profligate sinner who sees the light of divine truth, abandons worldly pleasures, and embraces God. Thus Jemima Wilkinson’s early biographers may have portrayed her as lazy, frivolous, and prideful because such character traits supported this storyline.11 Regardless of the lack of quantity and quality when it comes to information concerning Wilkinson’s youth, it is clear that she experienced turbulence in her personal life in the years leading up to her rebirth as the Universal Friend. Some of the troubles she faced were all too common in early America. The death of Jemima Wilkinson’s mother in 1764 must have disordered domestic life in the Wilkinson household and very likely had a strong emotional impact on her husband and children. The early life of the Shaker prophet Ann Lee provides a useful reference point when considering the effect that events in Jemima Wilkinson’s early life had on her spiritual rebirth. Lee came from a disadvantaged background and she grew up a poor girl in the English Midlands during a time when the region was experiencing the opening phases of industrialization. She made her living working in factories, received no formal education, and was functionally illiterate, which helps to explain the Shaker leader’s later emphasis on the

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spoken word and disdain for the educated clergy. Far more influential to her rise as a prophet was Lee’s traumatic experience with marriage and motherhood. Lee ended up in what was by all accounts an unhappy marriage that she had desperately tried to avoid. Making matters worse, Lee experienced four difficult pregnancies, all of which resulted in stillbirths or children who died not long after they were born. These traumatic life experiences catalyzed her transformation from a working-class woman into a holy prophet and inspired “Mother” Ann Lee’s later emphasis on celibacy and avoiding “carnal” relationships like marriage or motherhood.12 In a similar fashion, Jemima Wilkinson’s experience of her mother’s death due to childbirth may have been a factor in her emergence as a celibate messenger of God. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War was another source of instability that buffeted Jemima Wilkinson and her family. Like households across the colonies, the Wilkinsons experienced difficulties related to the conflict. First, they faced the choice of maintaining their loyalty to the British Crown or casting their lot with the revolutionaries, knowing that either option carried considerable risks. Second, there was the destructiveness of war itself. Family members drawn into military service faced death in battle or by disease, and soldiers, either in the form of renegade looters or regular foraging parties, posed a threat to persons and property. As Quakers, the war posed additional challenges to Jemima Wilkinson’s family. Many in the Society of Friends remained true to their pacifist principles and, in doing so, earned the enmity of revolutionaries who bore the burden of military resistance. Others, like the Wilkinsons, placed their allegiance to the new United States ahead of religious proscriptions and joined the American war effort. This choice came with its own cost, for such a breach of discipline invariably resulted in dismissal from the Society. Such was the case with three of Jemima Wilkinson’s brothers. Benjamin became a lieutenant in Cumberland’s militia company and a member of the primary revolutionary institution at the local level, the town’s Committee of Safety. His younger brothers Stephen and Jeptha later joined him in arms. In March 1776, the Quakers’ Smithfield monthly meeting initiated proceedings against the latter two for having “attended Trainings for Military Exercise” and, by August, had disowned them. The Wilkinsons also had other run-ins with local Quaker authorities that had nothing to do with the war. In February 1776, the Smithfield meeting started disciplinary proceedings against Jemima Wilkinson’s elder sister, Patience, for having an illegitimate child and dismissed her just a month after Stephen and Jeptha.13 Jemima Wilkinson faced additional anxieties besides those related to the war. As a young woman entering her mid-twenties, it is very likely that she had begun to consider her prospects for marriage. For women at this time, if

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they would marry and who they would marry were decisions that arguably had the greatest impact on their futures. The average age of marriage among Quaker women in the late eighteenth century was twenty-two or twentythree, and just over half of Quaker women wed between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two.14 By 1776 Jemima Wilkinson was twenty-four years old— beyond the age by which a majority of her counterparts had married, and it is possible that she began to face the fear of becoming an old maid. Along with marriage came pregnancy and childbirth. In a time in which death during labor was common, the thought of becoming a mother must have also generated some uneasiness for a young woman. By the mid-1770s Jemima Wilkinson was probably encountering these same fears, and the fact that her own mother had died in childbirth would have intensified any worries she felt over the prospect of marriage and motherhood. Jemima Wilkinson also experienced the aftershocks of the Great Awakening, a series of revivals that swept across the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. It began in the Middle Colonies in the 1730s, picked up momentum in New England in the 1740s, and spread to the South by the 1750s. No matter when and where these revivals occurred, they grew out of a common, evangelical outlook. They stressed heartfelt religion over rote adherence to doctrine and ritual, upheld spiritual vitality rather than a university education as the chief credential of a minister, and reasserted the core Protestant principle that the faithful could form a direct relationship with God. In pushing these beliefs, the Awakening challenged the authority of the clergy and the religious status quo. Moreover, by positing the innate spiritual equality of all devout Christians and devaluing worldly badges of power such as wealth, evangelicals called distinctions of rank and status into question.15 New England’s Awakening gave birth to a dissenting spirituality that helped pave the way for Wilkinson’s rebirth as the Public Universal Friend. In this region the advocates of the revival became known as “New Lights,” and they lined up against the defenders of the standing orthodoxy, or “Old Lights.” Controversy also emerged from within the ranks of the New Lights as radicals who pushed the boundaries of religious fervor broke ranks with more moderate evangelicals. Most New Lights were members of the Congregational Church who sought to reform the denomination and infuse it with the new, evangelical ethos. However, some of them, heeding the words of the revivalist preacher James Davenport that the regenerate (those who followed God’s path) should cut ties with the unregenerate, formed their own churches and became known as Separates or Strict Congregationalists. They formed the radical fringe of the New Light movement. The Separates eschewed denominational institutions, their ministers took part in

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spirit-driven extemporaneous preaching, and their rank and file engaged in startling bouts of ecstatic worship. This enthusiasm could not overcome the Separate churches’ lack of institutional structure, and many of them collapsed or merged with the growing Baptist movement by 1770.16 Nevertheless, even though the New Light Separates had declined in number by the Revolution, their legacy of religious enthusiasm was still alive and well by the time Jemima Wilkinson grew into adulthood. In addition, the Great Awakening in New England spilled beyond the Congregational and Baptist churches and touched the Society of Friends. Among New England Quakers, the revival manifested itself in the form of a growing number of “Newlites” or “Separators.” These Friends, following in the footsteps of radical New Lights, broke away from regularly established Quaker meetings and rejected church doctrine in favor of individual conscience.17 As it had done with many ordinary folk, the revival’s ferment directly touched Jemima Wilkinson and had a profound impact on her religious outlook. In August 1770 ( just a little over a month before his death in Newburyport, Massachusetts), the greatest itinerant preacher of the eighteenthcentury Anglo-American world, George Whitefield, was in the midst of a tour that took him through two communities not far from Wilkinson’s home: Providence, Rhode Island, and Attleboro, Massachusetts. Local lore holds that Wilkinson heard Whitefield preach at one of these places and that the experience marked the beginning of her religious obsession. If Jemima Wilkinson did encounter Whitefield (and it seems more than plausible that she and her family would have taken advantage of the opportunity to see the most famous clergyman in the eighteenth-century Anglo-American world) and the meeting marked the beginning of her spiritual seeking, then it would represent an interesting parallel with the lives of other revolutionary-era prophets, for both Ann Lee and Benjamin Randall received religious inspiration after hearing Whitefield preach.18 It is certain that Jemima Wilkinson began to attend the meetings of a local New Light congregation at Abbot Run by late 1775 or early 1776. The group apparently cleaved to some of the more radical impulses of the evangelical movement, including the belief in direct, divine revelation as a source of spiritual insight. It was this association with New Lights that led the Smithfield monthly meeting to start disciplinary measures against Jemima Wilkinson in February 1776 and to confirm her dismissal—or in Quaker terminology, “disownment”—from the Society in September.19 Thus less than a month before her rebirth as the Public Universal Friend, Wilkinson found herself cut adrift from the religious framework of her youth and facing both the frightening uncertainties and exhilarating possibilities of charting her own spiritual course.

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Jemima Wilkinson constructed a new religious identity for herself with her startling transformation into a holy prophet in the fall of 1776. Putting aside her view that she died and God reanimated her body, it is likely that a number of overlapping physiological, psychological, and spiritual factors came together to spark Jemima Wilkinson’s rebirth as the Universal Friend. No matter if what struck her that fateful October was typhus or some other malady, it is clear from an affidavit later written by the physician who attended Wilkinson that she suffered from a high fever. Dr. Man also corroborated that Wilkinson suddenly recovered with “the idea that she had been dead and raised up for extraordinary purposes and got well fast,” though he insisted that at no point did she actually die. The doctor stated that the young woman’s case “was like one other he knew of that the fever being translated to the head she rose with different idea from what she had when the fever was general” and that he and several other witnesses considered Jemima Wilkinson “not to be in her right mind” after she emerged from her sickbed.20 This illness, combined with deep psychological tensions, triggered Wilkinson’s transformation into a holy prophet. She was a young adult grappling with various forms of stress related to both the Revolutionary War and her stage in life. Layered on top of this was an atmosphere of religious experimentation and instability wrought by the Great Awakening and a later wave of revivalism in New England—the “New Light Stir” of the 1770s and 1780s. The anxieties and experiences that led Wilkinson toward becoming a holy visionary are consistent with the path others followed toward this end. Time and again, the era’s self-styled prophets translated personal crises into intense spiritual seeking and a moment of profound religious revelation.21 It is also noteworthy that Jemima Wilkinson’s birth as a prophet, which at first glance appears so singular and idiosyncratic, was in many ways consistent with Quaker culture. The trajectory of her life followed a pattern commonly seen among Quakers in which a series of hardships sparked an individual’s spiritual awakening. This process often involved a period of religious experimentation during which they broke ranks with the Society of Friends and associated, if but briefly, with other denominations. Wilkinson’s turn to prophecy was also consistent with the Quaker belief that the choice and ability to serve as a minister in the Society of Friends was not the product of human agency but of God’s will. In other words, her claim to have been reanimated by God to serve as his holy prophet was only a more dramatic rendition of the perceived divine origin of all Quaker ministers. Jemima Wilkinson closely matches the demographic and social profile of other female Friends who felt moved to preach and undertake a public ministry. Like her, the vast majority of these women embarked on speaking tours

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as young adults (most were in their twenties), were literate and well read, descended from Quaker parents of middling economic means, and experienced some sort of spiritual crisis that directly precipitated their decision to preach. That the Public Universal Friend thought of his turn to prophecy in terms that were roughly compatible with Quaker precedents is evident in the fact that his moniker was a modification of the title, “Public Friend,” the Quakers gave to their itinerant preachers. In describing his transformation into a prophet, the Friend may have also borrowed inspiration from the story of the Quaker Margaret Brewster. Brewster’s tale was part of a wider literature concerning Friends who suffered during the era of Quaker persecution in Puritan New England. As the story goes, in 1677 Brewster was in the midst of a serious illness when she was “raised up as one from the dead” and came from her sick bed “to visit the bloody Town of Boston, and to bear a living Testimony for the God of my Life.” The parallels between Brewster’s case and Wilkinson’s later experience are obvious.22 If local Quakers had not chosen to reject the validity of Jemima Wilkinson’s testimony, it is possible that her career as a prophet would not have taken her beyond the bounds of the Society of Friends. Quaker James Emlen, who obtained an interview with the Universal Friend in 1794, recounted that “she informed us that at her first call to Gospel service she appear’d in a Meeting of our Society at Smithfield in New England, that after she had utter’d a few words a friend stood up & desired her to sit down, but she not submitting, the same request was repeated by another friend & then by another & another until no less than 5 friends required her to desist.” This story makes it clear that the Universal Friend’s break with the Society of Friends was not instantaneous; only after the Smithfield meeting rejected his attempt to relate his vision, did the prophet turn his back on the Quakers. A letter that Elijah Brown, the uncle of the prominent Rhode Island Quaker merchant Moses Brown, sent to the Smithfield monthly meeting in January 1779 reinforces this conclusion. In it, Brown described a meeting with Wilkinson in which he advised her to mend fences with the Quakers and obtain a certificate from the Society in order to gain official recognition as an exhorter. Clearly, Brown felt that Jemima Wilkinson’s ministry was consistent enough with the Quaker faith to make such an arrangement possible.23 Jemima Wilkinson’s association with New Lights may have also shaped her rebirth as a holy messenger. New England’s radical evangelicals experienced heaven-sent revelations much like the one Wilkinson received in 1776 and thus provided a model for her accession to prophethood. For example, Sarah Prentice—the wife of the radical New Light Reverend Solomon Prentice and adherent of the religious visionary Shadrack Ireland—had

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such a divine vision in 1752. According to New England’s leading Baptist clergyman, Isaac Backus, Sarah “passed thro’ a change in her Body Equivalent to Death; so that she had been intirely free from any disorder in her Body or Corruption in her Soul ever Since; and expected she ever sho’d be so; and that her body wo’d never see Corruption but wo’d live here ’till Christs personal coming.”24 Likewise, Connecticut New Light Hannah Heaton had visions, engaged in prophecy, and underwent a profound spiritual rebirth in her twenties. The necessity of a “new birth”—an idea at the very heart of the evangelical ethos—also provided a conceptual foundation for Wilkinson’s transformation into the Public Universal Friend. New Lights rejected the old Puritan idea of salvation as a gradual process of recognizing God’s grace and asserted that an individual’s acceptance of Christ would be experienced as a sharply felt moment of spiritual awakening attended by an unmistakable sense of inner peace. The Friend’s description of his death and reanimation can be read as a literal manifestation of this concept.25

Identity Jemima Wilkinson claimed to have been reborn as a holy messenger of God, but it is unclear if she thought she was Jesus Christ returned to Earth in female form, God’s mouthpiece whose actions and words flowed directly from the Creator, or something else altogether. Exactly who or what took possession of Jemima Wilkinson’s body in October 1776 is a question of great theological importance. The debate over exactly who the Universal Friend was revolves around whether or not he claimed to be the spirit of Jesus Christ.26 This question finds its origins in the very words the prophet used to describe his birth: “And the Angels said, 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.” One interpretation of these words is that they represent a clear reference to the Second Coming of Christ and, consequently, prove that the Friend believed that he was the son of God. Seen in another light, however, the passage is far more ambiguous. It is certainly an allusion to the millennium, but it does not clearly state that the prophet was the Messiah. It leaves open the possibility that the Friend believed that he was not Christ, but a “Spirit of Life from God” come to announce that the Second Coming was nigh.27 Several contemporary accounts support the idea that the prophet believed himself to be Christ returned. Reports that the Friend advanced himself as the Messiah surfaced throughout his ministry. In the fall of 1779, Reverend Ezra Stiles wrote that one of the prophet’s followers, Alice Hazzard, declared

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that the Friend was “the son of God and the Messiah reappearing in flesh” and that there was “no more Jemima but Jesus Christ.” When Wilkinson made her first visit to Philadelphia in 1782, the Marquis De Chestellux observed that she was “impressed with the belief that she is in her person the savior of the world revived, and travels from place to place, attended by twelve young men, whom she calls her apostles.” A couple of years later, the Reverend Samuel Stennett of Providence also claimed that the Friend saw himself as the Messiah. In a letter to James Manning, he stated that the holy messenger, “when in an audience of great numbers” pointed to himself and said “that when Jesus Christ first appeared, he came in the flesh of a man, but that he was now come in the flesh of a women.”28 A series of articles about the Universal Friend that appeared in Philadelphia newspapers also support the notion that the prophet believed he was Christ. A writer to The Freeman’s Journal asserted that Jemima Wilkinson held that the “divine inhabitant” of her body was “Christ Jesus our Lord, the friend to all mankind.” The author quoted her as saying, “ ‘No man can come to the Father [God] but by me—no man can come to the Father but by the son’ ” and noted that after speaking with “an appearance of high authority, and seeming sanctity,” would sometimes conclude her discourse “in a full and clear declaration . . . of her being Christ Jesus our Lord.”29 By the turn of the century, the view that Wilkinson saw herself as Christ in female form had become commonplace. In 1797 the itinerant Methodist preacher William Colbert wrote that Wilkinson “says that the soul that once inhabited her body is now in heaven, and that the soul of Jesus Christ now dwells in her.” In a similar vein, the 1802 edition of Marshall’s Catechism claimed that the Friend, “agreeable to her blasphemous pretentions,” had all of her linens embroidered with the letters “I.H.S. ( Jesus Hominum Salvator).” Finally, the Reverend Thomas Smith, another itinerant Methodist preacher, reported in 1806 that she “professed herself to be the Son of God” and that “the divinity of Jesus Christ . . . entered her person bodily, that the redemption of mankind might be accomplished.”30 Abner Brownell, an early follower of the Universal Friend who later turned against Wilkinson, denied her holy identity, and published an exposé on her sect titled Enthusiastical Errors, also presents testimony concerning Wilkinson’s conviction that her body had been reanimated by Christ. He noted that in her sermons and conversations, Wilkinson labored to mimic the “expressions of our Lord Jesus Christ, as recorded by the evangelical apostles in the New-Testament.” In addition, Brownell asserted that she often quoted Jeremiah 31:22—“a woman shall compass a man”—in order to make an “allusion to Christ’s coming in the habit or form of a woman.”

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At other times, Wilkinson reminded her disciples not to reject her words for they were “not her’s alone, but her Father’s who sent her” and spoke to them concerning Christ’s “outward Appearance, his Shape, Stature, Features and Complexion, and Habit” in order that “they may look upon her and see how near she resembles those Descriptions.” Finally, Brownell noted that when Wilkinson prayed, she never addressed herself to Jesus but only “to her Father,” leaving it to her listeners to draw the proper conclusion.31 Though abundant, contemporaries’ assertions about Jemima Wilkinson’s messianic pretensions lack credibility. Most of this testimony comes from people whose personal knowledge of the Universal Friend was extremely limited or in the form of second- or thirdhand information invariably imparted to its author from an unnamed source. Even testimony from people like Abner Brownell who were in a position to know of what they spoke is suspect on several counts. He wrote Enthusiastical Errors after a bitter falling out with the Friend and certainly had a motive to disparage Wilkinson’s character by accusing her of harboring messianic delusions. Moreover, like any author, Brownell wanted his book to sell and filling it with extraordinary claims about the Universal Friend would have served that end. It is also possible to compare Brownell’s portrayal of Wilkinson in his book with the one contained in the journal he kept during the years he traveled with the prophet. In the latter, he tellingly makes no mention that the Friend ever claimed to be Jesus Christ, undermining the credibility of his later, published pronouncements.32 There are also numerous contemporary accounts denying that the Friend claimed to be Christ. John Lincklaen, who visited Wilkinson in New York in 1791, remarked that she set “forth that she is sent by Jesus Christ and enlightened by his spirit to convert mankind.” In other words, the Friend was not Jesus, but his chosen messenger. In 1779, Ezra Stiles reported that a Reverend Ellis of Stonington, Connecticut, had conversed with the Friend. In the exchange, the prophet identified himself as “the Comforter,” explaining that he had been “raised up by God to give Comfort to his people”—a far cry from claims of being the Messiah. Moses Brown confirmed Stiles’s information in a letter in which he wrote that Wilkinson called herself “the Comforter,” stating that he had heard it “from her own mouth.” Abner Brownell, contrary to his claims that Wilkinson thought she was Christ, mentioned that the prophet believed “she was the woman spoken of in the revelations, that was now fled into the wilderness.”33 In contrast to the accounts that accuse the Friend of presenting himself as the Messiah, much of evidence to the contrary comes from the prophet himself and those who had personal knowledge of him. Moses Brown clearly

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heard Wilkinson refute that she was the Savior in response to an accusation leveled by a Baptist elder “that she professed to be Christ.” In addition, a declaration of faith and union drawn up by the prophet’s followers on September 18, 1783, directly addresses the issue of who the Friend was. It states that they heard “the counsil of the lord Spoken by the Influence of the Holy Spirit through the tabernacle of the Universal Friend.” In short, the Friend was not Jesus but a heavenly spirit housed in human form. This is not to say that a few of the prophet’s more enthusiastic followers did not from time to time entertain the notion that the Friend was Christ returned. For example, Reverend Stiles recorded that a woman told him that Alice Hazard, one of the Universal Friend’s most avid disciples, believed that the prophet was “the Messiah reappearing in flesh; the son of Gd whom the Father hath put to Death.” However, it must be kept in mind that this is secondhand information and that Hazard was in the habit of making wild claims; indeed, Stiles’s informant also told him Alice believed that she, like the Friend, was a prophet of God. In comparison, the sect’s collective pronouncements never identified the Universal Friend as the Messiah, meaning that if they did think their spiritual guide was Christ, they maintained an unlikely conspiracy of silence on the matter.34 That the Friend did not believe he was the son of God is further corroborated by Christopher Marshall, a Philadelphia Quaker who met the prophet in 1782 and later maintained a substantial correspondence with him. He noted that in one of the prophet’s sermons he urged his listeners to renounce “the spirit of this world” and cast themselves “thro faith into the arms of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came, dwelt, and suffered in the flesh for our redemption.” Significantly, Marshall depicts the Friend speaking of Christ not as Christ.35 It appears that the Universal Friend believed that he was not Christ but a figure he referred to as the “Comforter.” Just who this was is made clear by the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in John’s Gospel: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever” (14:16), and “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me” (15:26). These passages establish that the Comforter was certainly not Jesus, but an emissary from God—a “Spirit of truth”—sent at Christ’s behest. John 14:26 provides a definitive answer as to the identity of the Comforter: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” In short, the Friend was not the Messiah, but a physical embodiment of the Holy Ghost charged by God to warn humankind of Christ’s impending

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return and Final Judgment. In a sense, Wilkinson possessed a messianic complex without believing that she was the Messiah. This is likely the closest anyone can come to understanding how the Friend envisioned himself, for he was not forthright on this point. For example, the author of a letter that appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper related that when he asked the Friend who he thought he was, he simply replied, “I am that I am.”36

New England Ministry Regardless of exactly who or what the Public Universal Friend was, the years immediately following his descent to earth were a period of religious formation and experimentation for the prophet and his growing number of adherents. During this time the holy messenger established his ministry, traveling and preaching across southern New England. Just two days after his birth, the Universal Friend attended Sabbath-day worship at a nearby Baptist meetinghouse. After the service was over, he gave his first public sermon under the shade of a tree in the churchyard. No detailed record of what he said survives, but tradition holds that the prophet spoke for about a half-hour on the merits of virtue, the evils of sin, and the necessity of repentance. In his first act as a preacher, the Friend established what would become some of the signature features of his ministry: orthodox religious themes delivered with a disarming confidence and air of conviction by what appeared to be a young woman possessed by a divine, masculine spirit. From the start, it was not the message but the messenger that made the Universal Friend stand out.37 In the years following his public debut, the Friend preached to an everwidening orbit of listeners. In the summer of 1777 Moses Brown recorded that he visited Jeremiah Wilkinson’s farm and heard his daughter-turnedprophet praying late at night, and it is likely that the Comforter delivered his earliest sermons here and at other locations in the immediate vicinity of Cumberland. However, as word of the Friend’s prophetic claims and inspired preaching spread, he received invitations to preach from communities throughout Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Not all of the prophet’s public appearances met with encouragement. One commentator reported that when Wilkinson spoke at a local Quaker meetinghouse, those in attendance demanded that she stop, to which she replied, “As it was the Lord who spoke by her she could not be silent unless they applied their hands to her Mouth.”38 In addition to holding meetings in churches and homes, the Friend made a habit of speaking at funerals and executions. The forces of age, disease, and war assured that there were plenty of the former, while the capture of British

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spies and American deserters provided opportunities for the latter. These events provided sober occasions during which the prophet’s listeners could reflect on his dire message of sin, repentance, and the Apocalypse to come. Moses Brown reported that the Friend not only prayed for the souls of the condemned, but also for those of their executioners.39 Ruth Pritchard, one of the Friend’s earliest and most devoted converts, confirmed these features of his ministry in a reminiscence describing the prophet’s early travels: The Friend of Sinners began to serve In the year 1777 When this Nation was still in arms and America had embroiled her hands in human blood. There appeared the Messenger of Peace going from City to City and from Village to Village proclaiming the News of Salvation to all that would Repent and believe the Gospel. The Friend was not staid by guards of armed men. She went through to visit the poor condemned prisoners in their Chains. Naked swords shook over the Friend’s head, she was not in terror because of the mighty Power of the Lord. No storms or severity of weather could hinder the Friend’s journey to speak unto Souls like the unwearied Sun, Determin’d its faithful race to run, spreading heavenly benediction far abroad that wandering sinners might return to God.40 Elijah Brown wrote a letter to the Quakers’ Smithfield monthly meeting in January 1779 that throws some additional light on the prophet’s early activities. He mentioned attending several meetings held by the Friend early in 1777 and reported that his chief concern was “to warne A wicked world to turne from thare Evel corsis & to Live A Life to God.” Brown described the prophet as “a mesinger from God” whose words “sprung from the divine influence of Gods holey spiret,” once again confirming that the Comforter spoke with a confidence and earnestness that converted many listeners into believers.41 Elijah Brown’s positive reaction to the Universal Friend was not singular, and the prophet attracted a growing circle of converts. Jemima Wilkinson’s immediate family provided the Friend with some early followers. In May 1777, the Smithfield monthly meeting began disciplinary proceedings against Jemima Wilkinson’s father for having “neglected the attendance” of their meetings and his association with the Universal Friend. In August, the committee appointed to deal with Jeremiah reported that he had “sundry times attended meetings appointed by one who hath been disowned by Friends”— a clear reference to his daughter-turned-prophet—and recommended that he be ejected from the Society for his transgressions. The Smithfield meeting accepted the report and disowned him in late September.42 Likewise, Jemima

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Wilkinson’s brother, Stephen, and four of her sisters, Deborah, Elizabeth, Marcy, and Patience, chose to follow the Universal Friend. As previously mentioned, the Quakers had disowned Patience and Stephen for breaches of discipline even before they entered into fellowship with the Comforter, but the Smithfield monthly meeting specifically dismissed Deborah, Elizabeth, and Marcy for their adherence to the prophet.43 The committee established to deal with Marcy chastised her for having “constently attended meetings of her Sister [ Jemima],” and her case ended in disownment from the Society of Friends in December 1778. The Smithfield Quakers similarly accused Deborah and Elizabeth of having “absented themselves from our meetings” in favor of the “Meetings of their sister Jemima” and eventually dismissed the two in May 1779.44 In the fall of 1778, the Public Universal Friend made a bid to transform his parochial wanderings into a trans-Atlantic ministry when he came “under a strong apprehension . . . to go and preach to the people of England.” His efforts to make this vision a reality encountered significant obstacles. The ongoing military struggle between Britain and the colonies made gaining passage to England extremely difficult. The Friend, Marcy Wilkinson, and another early convert, Rhoda Scott of Bellingham, Massachusetts, obtained permission from the commander of revolutionary forces in Rhode Island, General John Sullivan, to enter British-occupied Newport in order to gain passage on a ship bound for England. Problems arose when the prophet asked permission for William Aldrich of Smithfield, another early disciple and the future husband of Marcy Wilkinson, to accompany them on their journey. Sullivan was hesitant to allow a man of military age to pass through to British lines, and he sought the consent of the Rhode Island Assembly. The legislature granted their permission with the proviso that the prophet and his companions would be “subject to such restrictions has he [General Sullivan] shall prescribe.”45 For reasons that are not fully clear, the Friend and his small band of disciples never made the trip to England. It is likely that British authorities in Newport simply refused to grant passage to what they probably perceived as a bizarre and potentially troublesome female preacher. This is borne out by an entry the Reverend Ezra Stiles made in his diary summarizing reports that he had heard about the Friend: “She preached a while against Sin, War & fighting—with Liberty went into Newport, where hearing the British asperse the Rebels, she told them publickly in the streets that those they called Rebels were not so great rebels as those profane persons were; for the one were rebels only against an Earthly King, they against the great King of Heaven.” No wonder they refused the prophet’s request!46

Map 1. The Universal Friend’s New England ministry

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Even though the Comforter’s plans to extend his message across the Atlantic fell through, the fall of 1778 still represents a critical turning point in the evolution of his mission, for it marked the end of the Friend’s ministry as an ad hoc series of preaching tours and the beginning of its evolution into a religious movement with fiscal resources and regular institutions. In midNovember the prophet’s travels brought him to the village of Little Rest (now Kingston), Rhode Island, where he held two meetings. It is likely that one of Little Rest’s inhabitants, William Potter (known as “Judge” Potter for the position he held on the Rhode Island Supreme Court), first heard the Friend speak at one of these gatherings. What is for certain is that Judge Potter, his wife Penelope, and most of his thirteen children soon became followers. Though the judge was certainly not the prophet’s first convert, he was the most prominent person to ever become a disciple and brought considerable financial resources to bear on supporting the fledgling sect. By 1779 the Universal Friend had shifted the base of his ministry from Cumberland to Potter’s fourteen-room mansion in Little Rest. The judge added a number of rooms to house the Friend and provide a space for his meetings; this annex became known as “the Abby” or the “Jemima Place.”47 After the move to Little Rest, the Universal Friend expanded the geographic reach of his ministry and the size of his following. Besides Judge Potter and his large family, a number of other individuals joined the prophet’s growing band of disciples. A prominent resident of South Kingston, Rhode Island, Captain James Parker, resigned his commission in Colonel Crary’s regiment of Rhode Island state troops and joined the Friend in the spring of 1779. Three other inhabitants of the town, husband and wife John and Orpha Rose and John Reynolds, also joined the sect around this time. The Comforter won so many converts among South Kingston’s Quaker population that local Quaker authorities made it a disciplinary offense to even attend one of his meetings. Not just individuals, but entire families threw in their lot with the prophet. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, the families of James Hathaway and his brother Thomas entered into fellowship with the Friend. In East Greenwich, Rhode Island, the families of John Nichols, Peleg Briggs, Robert Hall, and George Spencer (among others) also became converts.48 In 1779 the Friend extended the orbit of his ministry into neighboring Connecticut, made a number of preaching tours in the southeastern part of the state, and attracted a host of new followers. Abner Brownell recounted a gathering held at New London at which “there was more than three thousand People at Meeting, who behav’d very Civil and gave very good attention.” In Groton, Richard Smith, his son Richard Jr., and daughter Mehitable attached themselves to the Comforter, while in the vicinity of Fisher’s Island

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and New London, Benjamin Brown along with five of his grown sons (Benjamin Jr., Daniel, James, Elijah, and Micajah) and their families became believers. In the nearby town of Stonington, Jedidiah Holmes and his family also added their numbers to the sect. By 1782 the prophet was traveling even further afield and made significant additions to his following in the western Connecticut town of New Milford. Here he gathered in converts from the Dayton, Botsford, Stone, Barnes, Ingraham, and Dains families.49 Perhaps the growing size of his following encouraged the Friend to put some of his teachings into writing, and in 1779 he published Some Considerations, Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects of Professor of This Age. Printed in Providence, the pamphlet identified its author as “a Universal Friend to all Mankind.” The publication is a bald-faced act of plagiarism, having been taken almost word for word from two classic Quaker texts: the Works of Isaac Pennington and William Sewel’s 1722 history of the Society of Friends. Moses Brown quickly saw this on reading it, and when he brought this act of counterfeit to the attention of one of the Comforter’s followers, the disciple offered this explanation: “ ‘Could not the Spirit dictate the same words as it did to Isaac.’ ” Simply put, if great minds think alike, then great prophets could speak alike. Abner Brownell, who arranged for the printing of Some Considerations, later explained that the Friend justified using Pennington and Sewel’s words without giving them credit, stating that “it would have the greatest effect upon the people” without reference to its true authors, “as it was . . . applicable to the present dispensation.”50 The metamorphosis of the Friend’s ministry into a full-fledged religious sect culminated on September 18, 1783, when a number of the prophet’s disciples drew up a public statement at a meeting in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. It opened: The Public Universal friend of Friends . . . hath for Several Years past Labored among us with Unwaryed Pains in Preaching the Everlasting Gospel in Public Congregations of People & in private familys in visiting the Sick & Prisoners by night & by Day by whose Seasonable Instructions, Admonitions & Invitations in the Demonstrations of the Spirit & with power . . . whereby numbers of People among us have been brought out of the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Gods Dear Son. They followed this testimony with a declaration of faith and their desire to come into fellowship with the Universal Friend: “We own and acknowledge that it was by obeying the Divine Counsil Spoken to us by & through the Dear Universal friend of friends that we are redeemed from wrath to come &

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brought into Union with God & his holy one & have and are Incorporated into a Religious Body or Society of People who call our selves & are Known by the name of Universal Friends.” The group soon built a meetinghouse in East Greenwich on an acre of land donated by John and Mary Nichols and appointed Peleg Briggs, Robert Hall, and George Spencer as trustees to oversee its upkeep.51 Just four days after the meeting that formally established The Society of Universal Friends, the itinerant Baptist minister John Pitman crossed paths with Wilkinson and a group of her followers outside of Providence. He later recorded his impressions of them in his journal, writing: “Saw Jemimy Wilkerson the Imposter with the number of Deluded Creatures that go about with her standing &c in the Road.” Though Pitman was not impressed by the Friend, many others were and decided to cast in their lot with the prophet. In the months following the founding of the Society and the construction of its first meetinghouse, the Comforter’s adherents built additional meetinghouses at South Kingston and Warwick, Rhode Island, and Stonington and New Milford, Connecticut, to serve their expanding ranks.52 Thus 1776 not only saw the birth of a new nation, the United States, but also a new prophet, the Public Universal Friend. The former was born of war and revolution, the latter of a series of personal experiences and religious currents that shaped the life of an ordinary young woman from Rhode Island. In the years leading up to her rebirth as a holy messenger, Jemima Wilkinson experienced tumultuous events, became prey to anxieties rooted in her move toward adulthood, and fostered a religious outlook that all contributed to her startling transformation. She came to believe that her body had become a vessel, not for the spirit of Christ, but for the Messiah’s promised emissary, the Comforter. Regardless of why Jemima Wilkinson became the Universal Friend or who the prophet thought he was, people took heed of his somber prophetic message. The Friend gained adherents and this following soon organized themselves into a formal religious sect. Therefore, this story is not just about an individual’s spiritual journey, and the focus now turns to understanding who these disciples were and what motivated them to enter into fellowship with the Public Universal Friend.

Ch a p ter 2

Numbers Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names —Numbers 1:2

In 1784 Hannah Adams published a catalogue of American religious denominations, the Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects. Among the book’s numerous entries is the following: There are also a few in Rhode-Island who adhere to Jemima Wilkinson, who was born in Cumberland. It is said by those who are intimately acquainted with her, that she asserts, that in October 1776, she was taken sick and actually died, and her soul went to Heaven, where it still continues. Soon after, her body was re-animated with the spirit and power of Christ, upon which she set up as a public teacher, and declares she has an immediate revelation for all she delivers. . . . She assumes the title of the Universal Friend of Mankind; hence her followers distinguish themselves by the name of Friends.1 As Adams’s Compendium makes clear, during the eight years following the birth of the Universal Friend, the prophet progressed from an itinerant exhorter into the leader of a fledgling religious sect. Abner Brownell numbered among the disciples who helped to transform the Friend’s message into a religious movement. He later recounted that his first knowledge of the prophet came in the form of strange rumors: “In the Year 1778, I heard of a remarkable Person of a Female Preacher . . . about which there was a Report of something very remarkable and extraordinary, 31

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that she was a Person that was said had been dead for the Space of an Hour, and by the mighty Power of God had been rais’d immediately to a State of Health, and had an immediate call to appear in public Testimony to preach to the People.” Soon after, Brownell went to see the Friend when the prophet hosted a meeting close to his home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. His first view of Wilkinson had a profound impact on Brownell. He described her as “singular and extraordinary, appearing in a different Habit from what is common amongst Women” and with “a very agreeable Aspect in her Countenance.” Brownell was as much taken with Wilkinson’s words as her appearance, observing that “her Exhortation seemed to be very affective, and she shewing a very sedate Countenance of Solemnity and Seriousness, and admonishing all to repent and forsake Evil, and learn to do well, and live as they would wish to die.” He was equally impressed with those who identified themselves as the Friend’s disciples, noting that they were “very devout in their Worship” and possessed an air of “Humility” and “Reformation.” Having gained a positive first impression of the prophet, Brownell continued to attend his meetings.2 Abner Brownell’s interest in the Universal Friend was not a product of mere curiosity but earnest spiritual seeking. He explained that he “was awaken’d at Times to a serious Concern of my immortal State; and as Mankind is naturally inclin’d when they see that they are fallen, for to seek some Way of Redress and Recovery.” He saw in the Comforter a possible path toward redemption and chose to take it, explaining that the prophet’s “doctrine and Practice of Performance in Religion, seem’d to have so much Resemblance of Holiness and the Truth . . . that after I had heard several Times I was much engaged to have Unity and Fellowship with it.” Thus in 1779 he joined the ranks of the Universal Friend’s followers and accompanied him on many of his early travels across southern New England. Brownell’s faith was intense but short lived. In 1782 he had a falling out with the Friend and wrote an exposé on the prophet and his Society entitled Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected. It is likely that Brownell was inspired by Valentine Rathbun, a Shaker defector who published a critical account of the group and their leader, Ann Lee, just a year before.3 Understanding why individuals like Abner Brownell chose to follow the Public Universal Friend is essential to telling the full story of his ministry. The demographic and economic profile of the Friend’s disciples hardly distinguished them from mainstream society and offers up few clues about their attachment to the holy messenger. Thankfully, the life histories of the prophet’s followers are more telling and reveal patterns of instability, anxiety, and loss that may have led them to him. The path converts followed to the

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Comforter cannot, however, be fully understood as idiosyncratic reactions to personal experience. Rather, their decision to attach themselves to the extraordinary figure of the Universal Friend illuminates the broader contours of religious life in revolutionary America. The late eighteenth century was a time of intense spiritual fervor and religious experimentation for many Americans, and the spiritual course set by the Friend’s followers, though unique in some respects, has much in common with the religious seeking of their fellow citizens.

Converts By 1787 the Universal Friend had attracted hundreds of followers.4 Information on the age, sex, marital status, and socioeconomic position of these disciples, when considered collectively, does provide some insight into why they cast in their lot with the prophet. Adult converts who came into fellowship with the Friend as an act of their own free will hold the key to an understanding of motives. This group excludes children and young adults who were living under their parent’s roof at the time they joined the Society because they generally had no choice but to adhere to the spiritual path laid out for them by their mothers and fathers.5 It does, however, include married women. In theory wives were subordinate to their husbands and followed their spiritual lead, but theory did not always match reality. Many of the women who joined with the Universal Friend demonstrated a great deal of independence in spiritual matters. For instance, Elizabeth Kenyon came into fellowship with the prophet independent of her husband; he did eventually join the Society but only long after his wife’s conversion. Thus, in this case, it was the wife who set her family’s spiritual course.6 In terms of their sex, there does not appear to be much that separated the Friend’s disciples from the general population. They were almost evenly divided between men and women (48 and 52 percent respectively), and therefore it seems that the prophet appealed equally to both. However, these figures need to be placed in a broader context. In 1800 the split between men and women in the United States was 51 to 49 percent.7 This indicates that the ratio of men to women in the Friend’s sect did diverge from the national norm. However, the difference is modest and hardly served to distinguish the group from society at large. It appears that the Friend’s followers generally matched the age profile of American society. Out of those who were above the age of nineteen at the time of their conversion, about half (47 percent) were in their twenties and just over a quarter (28 percent) in their thirties. Ruth Pritchard, Sarah

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Richards, Benedict Robinson, George Sisson, Stephen Card, and Bethany Luther—many of whom would go on to become leading members of the Society of Universal Friends—were among the many individuals who joined the Comforter’s ministry in their twenties. Abner Brownell was also among this cohort of younger converts, being twenty-two or twenty-three when he came into fellowship with the Universal Friend. Abel Botsford, William Carter, Castle Dains, James Hathaway, and Mehitable Smith numbered among the smaller but still substantial group of converts who came to the Friend in their thirties. Less than a quarter (23 percent) of the prophet’s adherents were forty or above when they joined his sect: 12 percent were in their forties, 5 percent in their fifties, and 3 percent each in their sixties and seventies. Jonathan Botsford Jr. and Susannah Spencer were among the more modest number of followers who joined in their fourth decade of life, and Judge William Potter and Peleg Briggs Sr. stood among the small group who did so in their fifth. Jeremiah Wilkinson, who was in his seventies at the time of his conversion, was among a handful of people who came to the Friend in their old age, and his close personal connection to the prophet likely explains why he made such a move so late in life.8 Like the general population, the Society of Universal Friends contained adults at every stage of life, but it appears that people in their twenties and thirties were overrepresented and those forty or above underrepresented among the converts. The 1800 census shows that people forty-five years or older constituted about 23 percent of the population above the age of nineteen, while only around 17 percent of the Friend’s followers who were over nineteen when they joined his sect were forty-five or above. In addition, data drawn from the 1830 census indicate that people in their twenties represented about 41 percent of the population above the age of nineteen (versus 48 percent among the Friends) and those in their thirties constituted another 25 percent (versus 28 percent in the sect). Meanwhile, Americans forty and older made up about 33 percent of the population above the age of nineteen, compared to 23 percent among the prophet’s converts. Considering the fact that the American population got progressively older between the late eighteenth century and the 1830s, the gap between the Universal Friends and the general population in terms of people over forty was likely not as great as these statistics indicate.9 Nevertheless, even taking this factor into account, it does seem that the age structure of the Friend’s disciples diverged from the norm. The reason for this difference may lie in the simple fact that young adults who are in the midst of carving out a place for themselves in the world are more likely to make a shift in their religious affiliation than those who have already established themselves. In other words, the age profile of

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the prophet’s adherents may not tell us anything specific about the sect but merely reflect a broad pattern of behavior.10 It also appears that a higher proportion of the Friend’s followers lived permanently outside the bonds of marriage than among the general population. Trying to establish the marital status of the prophet’s adherents is difficult because of a lack of reliable data. Nevertheless, among converts for whom solid information on this point is available, it appears that over fourfifths (86 percent) married at some point in their lives. The rest (14 percent) remained single, although it is not always clear if this was a result of choice or circumstance. For example, Susannah Potter died when she was twenty-two, and it is impossible to say whether or not she would have married had she lived longer.11 What is clear is that the proportion of the Friend’s followers who never married was significantly greater than the national norm, for in the late eighteenth century only a very small minority of white Americans (probably somewhere between 8 and 5 percent) never married.12 This divergence was likely a product of the Friend’s emphasis on celibacy. He did not mandate the practice among his adherents but only recommended it as a spiritually superior state, and a number of converts acted on this advice. Although the racial makeup of the Friend’s disciples does not say much about their motives for joining his sect, it does shed light on their beliefs. While the Society of Universal Friends was overwhelmingly white, a handful of its members were African American. The Society’s “Death Book,” a log that recorded the time of death of most of the sect’s members, lists two African Americans: Cuff, described as “William Potters Negro Boy,” and Jacob Weaver, who the book identifies as “an Ethiopian.” In addition, an ex-slave woman by the name of Chloe Towerhill joined the sect and later lived with the Friend. Another African American woman, Sarah Negus, also numbered among the prophet’s followers. The Friend, drawing on the Quakers’ growing abolitionist outlook, saw slavery as a sin and worked to free his followers from its moral poison.13 One of the Comforter’s wealthiest and most prominent disciples, Judge William Potter, responded by freeing at least some of his slaves, including Mingo and Caesar on March 27, 1780. Likewise, on November 20, 1782, Benjamin and Sarah Brown freed “a certain Negro Girl named Cloe aged about eighteen years” after being “convinced by the spirit of truth that it is unjust for us to hold any of our fellow creatures in bondage.” James Hathaway and James Parker, both leading members of the sect, witnessed the manumission papers, further pointing to the Friend’s influence in this matter. The “Cloe” mentioned in the document was the same African American women, Chloe Towerhill, who later joined the Society of Universal Friends.14

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The geographic distribution of the prophet’s followers simply reflects the geography of his ministry, with the areas that became the focus of the Friend’s preaching tours contributing the lion’s share of converts. Of the prophet’s 136 disciples whose place of residence is known, two-fifths (40 percent) came from Connecticut, and most of these lived in the western Connecticut town of New Milford and a cluster of communities (Groton, Stonington, and New London) in the southeastern corner of the state. Just over a third (35 percent) hailed from Rhode Island, with knots of converts coming from the towns of Cumberland, East Greenwich, and South Kingston. Massachusetts contributed just under a tenth (8 percent) of the Friend’s disciples. All of them resided in the southeastern part of the state, with individual converts coming from Boston, Dartmouth, Bellingham, and a more sizable group from New Bedford. In sum, New England, where the Friend spent the most time and energy, provided the prophet with the vast majority of his following. Pennsylvania was another significant source of converts, and twenty-two (16 percent) of the prophet’s followers came from Philadelphia or the city’s immediate environs. William Carter of Albany appears to be the only Universal Friend who resided in New York at the time he joined the sect.15 If the prophet’s disciples had been poor, deprived, and marginal members of their communities, then their religious seeking could be seen as a response to social and economic discontent; however, the Universal Friend’s followers do not fit this profile, and the links between wealth, status, and religious allegiance are far more complex. The evidence paints a picture of people who were, as a group, economically and socially secure. Tax records show that the Friend’s adherents were just as well off, if not slightly more prosperous, than their neighbors. The average value of estates included in the 1782 tax assessment for Groton, Connecticut, was about £44, while for those in the Friend’s sect who appear in the list, the average was £85. This figure is somewhat deceiving, for it includes Benjamin Brown, who possessed one of the highest assessments in the town. When he is removed from the calculation, then the median assessment for the prophet’s disciples stands at £51, which is still above the average for the town’s inhabitants. The 1778 tax roll for East Greenwich, Rhode Island, shows a similar pattern. The average assessment in the town was $377, while the average for the Friend’s followers who resided there was $484.16 It does not appear that economic deprivation explains why people were drawn to the prophet. If anything, the membership of the Society of Universal Friends leaned toward the well-to-do. Thomas Hathaway, who joined the Comforter in 1784, was the oldest son of a prominent shipbuilder in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and inherited the majority of his father’s estate.

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Hathaway developed his father’s business and became quite wealthy, which he demonstrated by paying for the construction of a large, three-story home before the Revolutionary War. Likewise, David Wagener and Benedict Robinson were well-heeled individuals who, when they followed the Friend to New York, had the funds to obtain thousands of acres of land and invest in ventures such as the construction of saw and grist mills. Judge William Potter was among the wealthiest of the prophet’s adherents: he owned a substantial estate in Rhode Island, possessed eleven slaves in 1774, and had the money to purchase extensive tracts of land in New York after he followed the Friend there.17 Most of the Friend’s converts were, generally speaking, not marginal figures in their communities but respectable farmers and craftspeople. Groton’s 1782 tax list describes Richard Smith as a “carpenter,” and manumission papers signed by Benjamin Brown identified him as a “husbandman,” meaning that he made his living by farming. The fact that he had a slave to set free indicates that he was probably a man of some means.18 The prophet also counted men of rank among his disciples. Again, William Potter stands out in this respect, for he was a prominent political figure both locally and at the state level. He served as Kingston’s clerk for more than twenty years and represented the town in both the lower and upper houses of the Rhode Island legislature. William Potter earned his title “Judge” in 1768 when the colony appointed him to the first of several terms as Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas for King’s (now Washington) County. In a sign of his early devotion to the Friend, Potter stuck by his spiritual leader even as he saw his political posts stripped from him in response to his decision to follow the prophet. James Parker also possessed badges of status. He was a South Kingston justice of the peace and held the rank of captain during the Revolutionary War, a commission he resigned upon joining the Friend in 1779.19 What this look at the Universal Friend’s disciples ultimately brings into focus is that, as a group, they mirrored hierarchies of wealth and status intrinsic to early American society. Like communities across the nation, the sect embraced people of varying ranks. At the top stood a few wealthy and wellconnected gentlemen like Judge William Potter and James Hathaway who mediated between local life and a broader sphere of politics and commerce. Beneath them lay a stratum of prominent farmers and tradesmen whose power and influence was bounded by networks of community and kin. Benjamin Brown of Groton provides a good example of this type: he was wealthy by the standards of his neighbors, owned a slave, and as the father of many children, was the patriarch of an extended family network.20 Below the likes of Brown were more humble householders who formed the backbone of any community and provided the Society of Universal Friends with the majority

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of its members. Among this group stood Richard Smith and his son, Richard Jr., as well as Elijah Brown and Latham Avery. These men were all residents of Groton and possessed estates that placed them in the middling ranks of the town’s property holders. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the poor and the unfree. Although the Friend’s Society was not dominated by the former and free of the latter, there were certainly some members who experienced difficulty supporting themselves and their families. Indeed, when the Comforter and his followers moved to New York, a number of widows and poorer members of the Society lived as dependents in the prophet’s household or on land he provided for them.21 The Friend’s followers also paralleled mainstream society in that ties of kinship knit them together into households and families. Far from being alienated individuals, the vast majority of converts came into the sect accompanied by one or more family members. Of the prophet’s adherents, 85 percent shared a last name with other sect members at the time of their conversion. The implication is that those who shared last names also shared ties of kinship either through blood or marriage. Though it is true that people with the same last name are not necessarily related, this seems to be the case for only two of Wilkinson’s converts—Benedict and William Robinson. For the rest, common last names do appear to indicate kinship. It is equally true that two people who have different last names can still be related, and this describes the situation of several of the Friend’s converts. Mary Bramall and Sarah Wilson, for instance, were sisters, but the former had taken her husbands’ last name. Likewise, Alice Hazard was the married daughter of William Potter. In addition, Patience Allen was the sister of Elizabeth Smith, the wife of Richard Smith. Thus simply focusing on the existence of common last names actually underestimates the number of kin ties.22 The people who joined the Friend often did so in family groups. When Judge William Potter attached himself to the prophet, so did his wife Penelope and most of their thirteen children. In addition to the Potter clan, the Holmes family of Stonington; the Browns of Groton; and the Dayton, Botsford, Stone, Barnes, Ingraham, and Dains families of New Milford also came into fellowship with the prophet. In all, members of at least forty-nine different families appear in the sect’s rank and file. Besides nuclear families, the Society of Universal Friends contained extended family networks. Perhaps the best example of this is provided by the Browns of Groton: Benjamin Brown along with his five adult sons—Benjamin Jr., Daniel, James, Elijah, and Micajah—and their wives and children all became disciples of the Friend. Likewise, the brothers Thomas and James Hathaway brought their families into the sect alongside one another. Of course, some who attached

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themselves to the Universal Friend did so unaccompanied by family members. Ruth Pritchard, for example, came to the prophet on her own. Likewise, Abner Brownell joined the sect without close kin at his side. But these individuals seem to be the exception rather than the rule.23 In sum, the Universal Friend’s converts, with a few minor exceptions, represented a veritable cross-section of American society, and there is nothing in their demographic or socioeconomic profile that seems to explain why they joined the prophet. They were men and women of various ages who lived and worshiped as members of families, and the distinctions of wealth and status that separated them from one another paralleled social hierarchies that existed in communities across early America. The essential normalcy of the prophet’s followers was not unique but a trait shared by members of various late-eighteenth-century sectarian movements.24 What distinguished religious seekers like the Universal Friends from the mainstream was not social status or economic standing but a set of deeply felt personal experiences and spiritual impulses that led them to make different religious choices.

Experience The life stories of the Friend’s disciples reveal an association between their decision to join the prophet and instability in their personal lives.25 There was no greater source of upheaval in late-eighteenth-century America than the colonies’ war for independence. The conflict brought anxiety and insecurity for most Americans, and it certainly touched the lives of the Friend’s followers. Choosing which side to take in the conflict or whether to remain neutral was one difficult decision they faced. That being said, no single pattern of political allegiance characterizes those who came into fellowship with the prophet. Both Whigs and Tories numbered among the Friend’s followers, although the former seem to have overwhelmingly dominated the Society. The fact that the sect drew the vast majority of its members from New England, a region dominated by Whigs where loyalism had difficulty taking root, is one likely explanation for this imbalance. Another possibility is that there were Tories in the Society of Universal Friends who simply hid their true loyalties both during and after the war. Among those disciples who actively supported the Revolution through military service was James Parker. He first served in a South Kingston militia unit named the “Kingstown Reds” and later as a captain in the Continental Army. Besides Parker stood John Rose, who also numbered among the ranks of Kingstown Reds. In addition, Elnathan Botsford served in New Milford’s revolutionary militia during the conflict. Another person drawn to the Friend (though he never formally

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joined his sect) was the retired Philadelphia druggist and merchant, Christopher Marshall. He was avid in his support of the Revolution—so much so that the Quakers, whose pacifist principles and neutralist stance precluded such activism, disowned him. Likewise, the Society of Friends also dismissed Jemima Wilkinson’s brothers and future adherents, Stephen and Jeptha, for their participation in the Revolution. There was also at least one Tory in the ranks of the Friend’s followers: Thomas Hathaway fled New Bedford for Nova Scotia during the war because of persecution he suffered due to his loyalist stance. Tradition has it that he even served in the British Navy during this exile. As with the general population, it is also likely that many converts simply tried to steer clear of the conflict.26 In discerning the relationship between the Revolutionary War and an individual’s decision to join the Universal Friend, what is relevant is not which side (if any) they chose but how they perceived the conflict. If Abner Brownell is any guide, many of the prophet’s disciples found the war a deeply troubling experience and feared being drawn into its vortex of violence and destruction. In his journal, Brownell recalled how when “the unnatural war” erupted between Britain and the colonies, he joined the revolutionary forces in hopes “of Seeking the honour and applause of man, and being promised to be promoted.” Though he never fought in a battle, Brownell did a week’s service with the militia when British troops invaded Rhode Island in 1776. As a result of this experience, Brownell turned his back on the conflict, having “concluded within myself never to go on Such an occasion again.” Latham Avery of Groton never took up arms, but he still felt the war’s impact. British troops raiding the Connecticut coast ravaged his property, for which he received over £103 in compensation from the state after the war’s end. Even if they managed to avoid its destructive effects, the Quakers, the primary group from which the Friend drew his followers, were especially vulnerable during the Revolutionary War. They were pacifists at a time when both the British and the revolutionaries demanded military service. The Society of Friends not only opposed taking up arms but sought to enforce strict neutrality among its members, which included not holding political office, taking oaths of allegiance to the United States, or paying taxes to the revolutionary government. All of these religious requirements put Quakers on the wrong side of the Whigs and made them targets of persecution, while Friends who buckled under the pressure faced disownment.27 Besides war, there were other sources of anxiety and instability that touched the lives of the Friend’s disciples. Sickness was always a cause for concern in early America, and during the Revolutionary War dangerous diseases stalked the land. Army camps provided the perfect breeding grounds for pathogens,

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and armies on the move spread illness in the wake. Abner Brownell noted one such episode in the summer of 1777, when New England suffered from a “great Pestilence of the Bloody Flux [dysentery].” Brownell’s reaction to the epidemic is significant. He wrote that the outbreak “greatly awakened me; Seeing So much Mortality as Expecting that Soon it would be my Turn.” It was this sense of his own mortality combined with the desire to secure salvation that sparked his religious seeking. The loss of a spouse also marked the lives of a number of converts. Christopher Marshall was a widower when he took an interest in the Friend’s teachings. Perhaps more significant is that Thomas Hathaway’s decision to follow the Comforter came right around the time that his wife, Deborah, died. Other sorts of tribulations marked the lives of converts. As previously mentioned, several of Jemima Wilkinson’s siblings were disowned by the Quakers before they joined the Friend. Likewise, it appears that Sarah Richards suffered through an unhappy marriage before she came into fellowship with the Friend.28 Of course, the troubles faced by the prophet’s disciples were hardly unique and not everyone who suffered from misfortune turned to unorthodox religious beliefs; nevertheless, there is compelling evidence that they were a critical ingredient in the decision to join the Universal Friend. The prophet and his followers habitually recorded their dreams, believing that they were potential sources of spiritual insight. This practice grew out of a long tradition of dream interpretation among Quakers and a newer turn to dreams as sources of religious inspiration among New England’s radical New Lights. The Universal Friends’ dreams are significant because they provide insight into their fears and aspirations and thus shed light on some of the psychological factors that brought them to the prophet.29 The dreams of the Comforter’s disciples reveal a strongly felt set of apprehensions that shaped their decision to follow him. The vast majority of the visions recorded by the Universal Friends were from the period after their conversion. Thus it is not always clear if the tensions they reveal predated their joining the sect. However, it seems safe to assume that even the dreams they had after coming into fellowship with the prophet reflect enduring psychological themes that likely had a role in their joining the sect. James Hathaway had a dream in 1780, before he turned to the Friend, that reflects the difficulties he encountered trying to live up to his Quaker-rooted principles of pacifism while a war raged on: I had a dream or vision on my bead and the thing that I vewed was that I was to be Maried and the Bride was prepared but I vewed that we had some words of exhortation to spake unto the people before that we

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could enter into the marige chamber. I then vewed my self a standing at the dore with wepons of war and I heared the Commandment given saying call him in and the sarvent came unto me at the dore and said unto me comin he told me that I could not comin with them wepons of war so I then set them down at the dore and then I have admittance in and . . . I see my gide which gides all that comes unto that Hous and I fell on my face at his feet amen. The motif of marriage likely symbolizes Hathaway’s union with Christ and his spiritual salvation. However, he cannot enter the house of God until he relinquishes his weapons. Perhaps Hathaway felt drawn or pressured to take an active part in the war and the dream served as a reminder that doing so would spoil his chance to earn God’s grace. Likewise, a document entitled “Vision of Dream of M.T. For the Universal Friend” clearly relates to the difficulties encountered by religious seekers who faced a dizzying choice of prophets to follow. The author recalled obtaining a copy of Valentine Rathbun’s recently published 1781 exposé on Ann Lee and the Shakers, An Account of the Matter, Form and Manner of a New and Strange Religion and that, on reading the book, he or she was filled with an “ardent desire” that God would reveal “what these two persons [ Jemima Wilkinson and Ann Lee] were that caused so much talk in the world.” M.T. then told of how the Lord granted the wish: “It pleasured God to shew me in the vision of the night, two lights in the form of two full moons about one houer high in the west, one of them had the face of the son of God in it and the other was a plane moon.” The two moons represented Lee and Wilkinson competing for M.T.’s spiritual allegiance. Since the author related this vision to the Friend, it can be assumed that M.T. came to the conclusion that he was the moon that “had the face of the son of God” and that Lee was the “plane moon” and a false prophet.30 Sarah Richards’s dreams also mirror the challenges she faced in her life both before and after she joined the Universal Friend. A number of her dream narratives feature references to marriage, including one that reads, “I dreamed the following Dream I thought I was at my Father’s House and was going to be married to a pale looking man dresst in ash colour cloathes who was then their waiting for me.” Two days later she dreamt that she “was at a Great wedding were there was a Great Concourse of People.” It is noteworthy that many of these allusions to marriage took on negative connotations. For example, the man she was to marry in the first dream was pale and dressed in ash-colored garb—hardly an enticing image of a groom. These ambivalent images of matrimony may have been a subconscious reaction to her own

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allegedly difficult marriage. In addition, they likely represent Sarah’s desire to abandon her earthly ties to her husband and enter into a spiritual, and celibate, marriage with the Public Universal Friend. If this were her wish, then it was granted. Richards’s husband, Abraham, sickened and died in 1786, leaving her a widow and free to deepen her relationship with the prophet.31 Besides instability in their personal lives, the other feature that correlates to converts’ decision to join the Universal Friend is their previous religious affiliation. Although the former denominational allegiance of many of the prophet’s disciples is unclear, what is striking is that among those for whom it is known, about three-quarters were Quakers and the remainder belonged to New Light Congregational or Baptist churches. Among the Comforter’s adherents were many former members of the Society of Friends such as Abner Brownell; William Potter and his family; Richard Smith, his son Richard Jr., and daughter Mehitable; and Jehu Eldridge. James Parker was born into a Quaker household, and his mother was a Quaker preacher, but he had left the Society of Friends and joined a New Light congregation by the time he met the prophet. Other converts drawn from New Light churches include Jonathan Botsford Sr. and his family, Sarah Niles, and Sarah Brown. Groton’s First Baptist Church admonished and later cast out Niles and Brown under the charge of “heresy” for attending meetings held by Wilkinson and accepting her claim to prophethood.32 There are several reasons for this association between Quakers, New Lights, and the Society of Universal Friends. First, there was a good deal of affinity between the groups’ religious creeds. In addition, the Friend focused his ministry on areas where Quakers and New Lights were plentiful. Rhode Island and eastern Pennsylvania were bastions of Quakerism, and New Light congregations were plentiful in both the former state and Connecticut. Indeed, the Connecticut–Rhode Island border region in which the Comforter so frequently traveled was the heartland of New England’s radical New Light Separates. Likewise, New Milford, the Friend’s outpost in western Connecticut, had a history of Quaker activity dating back to the 1730s and became the site of a Separate church in 1753. New England’s New Lights were also in the throes of tumultuous revivals when Jemima Wilkinson made her debut as a prophet. In what has come to be known as the New Light Stir, the evangelical spirit of the Great Awakening returned in the 1770s and 1780s. These decades witnessed intense revivals, the formation of new sects, and the emergence of charismatic prophets. New England Quakers also felt the impact of these events, and many Friends became caught up in the wave of religious enthusiasm. These evangelically inspired Friends drew the censure of Quaker authorities who wished to maintain strict order within the

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Society, and most of them suffered disownment. In a time when religious seeking and experimentalism were rife, it is not surprising that the Universal Friend was able to gather a harvest of converts. That South Kingston’s monthly meeting and other Quaker meetings in southeastern New England made associating with the prophet a breach of discipline punishable by disownment reflects how successful he was in drawing wayward Quakers.33 The Society of Friends’ uncompromising rejection of members who fell under the influence of the New Light Stir was one of the consequences of a “Quaker Reformation” which, like the revival, furnished the Friend with a ready pool of potential converts. Starting in the 1750s in Pennsylvania and spreading to New England by the 1770s, a movement emerged to revitalize the Society of Friends. Much of this effort focused on reestablishing church discipline, and the number of disciplinary cases brought before monthly meetings dramatically increased as reformers vigorously enforced rules concerning speech, dress, and other strictures on behavior. Between 1751 and 1760 proceedings concerning these issues in Quaker meetings in the northern colonies soared from 301 to 790. By the 1770s the number of cases over breaches of discipline in several northeastern monthly meetings had doubled or even tripled over their midcentury levels. A growing intolerance for rules breaking also characterized the reform era, and disownment from the Society became a more frequent outcome than pardons. For example, the Rhode Island monthly meeting saw dismissals grow from around ten a decade in the mid-eighteenth century, to about a hundred a decade in the 1770s and 80s. The disownment of large numbers of Quakers provided the Universal Friend with a steady stream of people in search of a new religious community.34 Whatever their denominational background, the characteristic that distinguishes the Friend’s disciples was a history of spiritual seeking. For many converts, the prophet was not their first (or even last) stop in their search for God’s saving grace. Ruth Pritchard, who joined the Friend in 1785 or 1786, described herself as “sincerely a Seeker” and affirmed “we must seek before we can find, we must knock before it will be open unto us.” James Parker was another inveterate searcher for spiritual truth. He was born a Quaker but became a New Light before joining the prophet. Later in life, he left the Society, associated with the Methodists, took an interest in the mystical teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, became an ordained Free Will Baptist minister, joined the Universalists in 1811, and returned to Methodism before his death! Abner Brownell was another religious seeker. In his journal, he explained that his “Earnest Desire . . . to join with People of God who were Traveling out of Spiritual Egypt into Heavenly Canaan” led him “to seek

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amongst Several Sort of Professions of Religion, to know for my Self who was in the Right way, that I might Travel with them.” Brownell was a Quaker before he joined the Friend’s society and later switched his allegiance to the Baptists.35 The Universal Friend’s adherents were largely ordinary people who mostly led unremarkable lives before they cast in their lot with the prophet. Their decision to come into fellowship with the Comforter was not a product of deviance or disenfranchisement but of a set of strongly felt religious impulses. Aligning themselves with the Friend was primarily a spiritual choice made by people whose background and personal experience predisposed them toward sectarianism. This is not to say that joining the Friend’s sect did not provide real social and psychological benefits to converts; however, the decision was primarily a religious act taken to gain spiritual rewards.

Rewards Contemporaries puzzled over why so many people joined the numerous sectarian movements that sprang up in revolutionary-era America. Some assumed that such folks were simply gullible dupes easily led astray by false prophets or that some sort of personal defect or disadvantage explained the religious course they set. Yet the Universal Friend’s disciples do not fit this stereotype. On the contrary, they appear to have been level-headed folk and included local magistrates, persons of property, and in the case of William Potter, wellrespected leaders in provincial government.36 Those who commented on the Society of Universal Friends struggled to explain why normal, well-balanced people latched onto such a bizarre figure. Abner Brownell addressed this very point in Enthusiastical Errors, observing that “some wise and learned Men of great Parts have been attached to her.” He explained Wilkinson’s appeal in terms of her personal magnetism: Another Influence she seems to have upon People is that of her being very eloquent; she exhorts in a pathetic Manner, with great Confidence and Boldness . . . that she has an immediate Revelation for all she delivers; that she is the greatest Minister that God has sent to the People this seventeen Hundred and odd Years, . . . which to many serious, sincere, seeking people, it seems to have a great effect, for no Person would rationally think, that any Person in their right Senses, would dare to hold forth and affirm such great and exalted Things concerning themselves, and to have such a great and marvelous Mission, and to hold forth nothing but what they had immediately by divine Revelation, unless it were so in Reality.37

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In other words, Wilkinson’s appearance was so startling, her claims so amazing, and her demeanor so unshakably sincere, that even an intelligent, reasonable person could come to the conclusion that she must be what she said she was. Even if the people who joined the Universal Friend were not weakminded enthusiasts, it remains difficult to understand why they did so, considering the costs that sometimes came with the decision. Those who associated with unorthodox religious movements risked their reputations and the censure of family, friends, and neighbors. As previously mentioned, William Potter’s political career ground to a halt when he joined the prophet, and he lost the local and state-level offices that had marked his status as a leading resident of his state. William Carter also paid a price for his loyalty to the Comforter. In a letter to the Friend, he wrote that on “declaring my self a Friend, those who had been my most intimate friends, became my enemies and most Inhumanely confined me in this place without any Just Cause.” In the very least, those who became disciples of the Universal Friend could expect to become a target of ridicule. One story relates that after George Spencer announced his allegiance to the prophet, locals mockingly referred to him as “Jemima’s George.”38 Sarah Richards’s dream journal includes an extraordinary vision that likely relates to the difficulties faced by those who chose to abandon their churches, communities, and families in order to follow the Friend. The dream is undated, but its content indicates that it was likely recorded around the time when Sarah first met the prophet and joined his sect. In the dream, an angel visited Sarah and told her that she must leave her home to follow the Friend, but before she could obey, people determined to stop her surrounded the house. Some in the mob “brought with them Warrants Signed by human Authority indicting me for the breach of the marriage Covenant and other decleared me to be a delirious person and that some place of Confinement should be provided for to secret me from all human Eyes,” while still others wounded her “sorely with Sharp Rasors.” The angel then opened a door in the house “so high they [the mob] could not reach it” and bore her away into the sky. After her rescuer put Sarah down, she then had to walk down a path covered with “Something Like Hatchet teeth which I was obliged to walk upon or not go at all, mine enemies Still persueing me I walked on these Sharp things.” Bleeding and exhausted, she arrived at an inn where James Parker and another of the prophet’s disciples, Mehitable Smith, tended to her wounds. The inn was then “beset about with Enemys Crying Bring out them People to us that we may do as Seemeth good unto us.” Sarah and her companions tried to leave, but the mob, which included “priests and

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Deacons which talked very loud and Cryed let justice take place and Let them be punished according to their Crimes,” captured them, threatened them with knives, and started to cart them off to jail. At that moment, “there Came from the Wilderness a gentle Brize of wind which to us was warm and Refreshing, but to them it was Destressing and filled them with Auges and trembling in all their joints which increased till Death appearned in their faces and Soon their Eyes were Closed and their Breath gone.” Sarah continued on her journey only to be stopped by another crowd who had built a gallows to hang her, but the Universal Friend arrived in the nick of time and rescued her by putting her assailants to sleep. This dream features themes of persecution and reflects real-life difficulties faced by individuals who embraced unorthodox religious beliefs.39 Though the Universal Friend’s disciples certainly paid a price for their religious allegiance, they saw the prophet as a means to achieve a number of spiritual rewards. First and foremost they sought a place in heaven. Although the pursuit of salvation has been a constant feature of Christianity, there have been certain times and places, such as late-eighteenth-century America, where this concern has been particularly pronounced. The instability caused by the Revolution and the continuing reverberations of the Great Awakening combined to produce a heightened sense of millennial expectation and a deep concern with religious matters. New England in particular saw the emergence of a supercharged religious atmosphere, which manifested itself as the New Light Stir. A primary draw of the Society of Universal Friends and the other sectarian movements that emerged out of this religious ferment were charismatic leaders who laid out a clear path to salvation. What the revolutionary era’s religious seekers wanted was not complicated theology but a straightforward prescription to obtain God’s grace. The Universal Friend preached that people only had to accept him as a holy prophet, live by his dictates, repent for past sins, and avoid committing new ones to earn eternal life at God’s side. The Comforter’s persona was strange and mystical but his message was not. As Brownell later recounted, the Friend simply told his listeners that it was “the eleventh hour” and that he was making a “last call of mercy that ever they will have.” In the context of revolutionary America, it was a compelling message.40 The Friend’s followers clearly saw in him a path to salvation. Ruth Pritchard first heard the prophet speak in Wallingford, Connecticut, describing how he spoke with a “Voice that spake as never Man Spake.” She believed that it was a voice “that which if obey’d will bring Light Life & Love unto the Soul.” Abner Brownell had a very similar reaction when he first heard the Friend preach in 1778. In his journal he recorded how he “heard her

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Improve her Gift in Public She being Very Eloquent in Speech, and Spoke much of Repentance and Reformation, and of Living a Life of holiness.” Brownell was so affected by the prophet’s words that he “set out to Reform and Life uprightly, and Laboured with great Anxiety, and that with Sincerity of Soul for to attain to Such a State, and to Life so as to Procure the Divine Favor, and Blessing of god.” Likewise, Sarah Richards confided to her diary that she would risk “ten thousand dangers” in order to follow the Universal Friend because she saw in the prophet “the hope of an immortal Crown” of eternal life in God’s kingdom.41 The dreams of the Friend’s disciples reflect this intense concern with salvation. As she lay ill in bed, Desire Miller had a vision in which two angels brought her to a “Blooming Garden” surrounded by walls of “transparent glass clear as crystal.” Next, they led her into a building with a staircase of solid gold where Jesus met her and led her to God on his throne. Miller then heard God say, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” which filled her “with joy unexpressable.” James Hathaway had a similar dream in December 1779 in which a voice proclaimed that he was “to have a Crown but not of this world,” a probable allusion to a heavenly crown of salvation. Another of Hathaway’s dreams shows that he did not assume that earning a place in heaven would be easy. In it, he found himself travelling along a narrow track between a wall and a “mire.” This metaphorical path to paradise eventually became so narrow that he had to bow his “face all most unto the ground” in order to keep moving forward.42 Besides salvation, the Friend provided spiritual enlightenment. The Comforter’s followers desired sacred knowledge and believed that the prophet could deliver it. David Wagener, a leading convert from Pennsylvania, recalled “conversing and improving” with the Universal Friend from whom he “had heard the truth and the whole counsel of the Lord declared.” In other words, Wagener believed the prophet offered a clear, complete, and authentic explanation of God’s plan for humankind. In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell confirmed that Wilkinson sought to appeal to people’s hunger for spiritual certainty, recounting that she preached “with great Confidence and Boldness, and Confirmation of her being right, and all other to be wrong.” Besides insight into God’s cosmic plan, the Friend also offered potential followers other, more immediate forms of knowledge. The prophet claimed to have the power of “fortelling of future Events” and of “having a Spirit of Discerning and knowing of all Things.” By following the holy messenger, his disciples hoped to receive the benefits of such power.43 The Universal Friend also offered his disciples empowerment through the development of their spiritual gifts. It is certainly true that the prophet

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expected followers to obey his dictates and treat him with reverence. Abner Brownell emphasized this side of the Friend’s ministry, asserting that the holy messenger told adherents that “they must be humble, and be willing to come low with their mouths in the dust, and be willing to be taught” if they ever wanted to obtain “peace and forgiveness.”44 However, these themes of obedience and subordination only represent one side of life in the Friend’s sect, for his followers also experienced it as a source of spiritual agency and power. Like the Comforter, his leading disciples preached and prophesied. Soon after joining the Friend, Ruth Prichard started exhorting both orally and in writing. Likewise, Sarah Richards quickly became the prophet’s confidant and second in command who preached, traveled widely, and experienced holy visions. Richards was instrumental in expanding the Friend’s ministry to Pennsylvania and later played an important role in pioneering the prophet’s community in New York.45 The exercise of spiritual gifts extended beyond the sect’s inner circle. In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell condemned the conviction held by many Universal Friends that it was “their duty to be public speakers in meeting.” In particular, he complained that women in the sect thought “the spirit moves them . . . to speak, and they will utter out something or another,” and when they arose “to speak, some will begin to tremble with their hands, some only with one hand, and some with both hands, and some their legs and knees, and all the body will shudder and tremble.” What Brownell portrayed as a shameful example of religious excesses, the Friend’s disciples saw as physical manifestations of spiritual power.46 Moreover, unlike the Shakers who focused their attention on the spiritually charged dreams of their charismatic leader, Ann Lee, the Universal Friend and his followers believed that the dreams of any sect member could potentially contain heaven-sent messages.47 The prophet’s adherents also found strength simply by associating with a figure who claimed great spiritual power and significance. By attaching themselves to the Universal Friend, they not only assured their salvation and glory in the afterlife, but gave meaning and significance to their life in the here and now. Upon joining the prophet, his disciples stepped out of a past in which they were ordinary and anonymous and into a future that promised to place them at the center of God’s cosmic drama.48 Sometimes the search for salvation and spiritual empowerment brought the Friend’s disciples into conflict with the prophet. Though the Comforter’s efforts to recruit believers certainly benefited from the spiritual hunger of revolutionary-era Americans, these desires could make for unpredictable followers. The exercise of spiritual gifts that the Friend engendered among

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his adherents and the confidence it built among them sometimes set the stage for defections from the sect. Abner Brownell’s time with the Society of Universal Friends provides the best-documented case of this process. Brownell was a quintessential seeker and had feared for his fate long before his first encounter with the Friend. As he explains in his journal: God was pleased from time to time to let light Shine on my understanding, to give me the Knowledge & Nature of Sin, and the Wages and Consequences of it, that my Very Nature was Polluted and Defil’d and that by one man Sin Enter’d into the world, and that I was from the Crown of the head to the Sole of the foot, Spiritually, full of wounds, Bruises, and Putrifying Sores, and that I was not only Conceiv’d in Sin, Brought forth in Iniquity, But that I had been going Astray from the Birth, and that in me Dwelt no good thing. As was commonly the case, this sort of spiritual tension led individuals like Brownell to attach themselves to charismatic prophets. He came into contact with the Friend in 1778 and was so impressed that he soon became a devoted follower.49 By the summer of 1782, Brownell’s religious journey had led him beyond the Friend. In that year he received a heavenly vision in which Jesus told him, “now thou art a Chosen Vesle for me, to bear Testimony of the Dispensate on the Gospel & Proclaim Salvation to the Children of men in my Name according to the measure of the gift of grace Receiv’d.” Clearly Brownell was no longer a mere follower but a prophet in his own right who needed to chart his own spiritual course. This did not sit well with the Universal Friend. Brownell recounted how his “Exhortations were not much approav’d of amongst Some of those that I Assembled with for Worship and Especially their Leader.” But he refused to silence himself or deny his ambitions and published his religious views in 1782 in a short book entitled The Worship of God according to the True Christian Divinity.50 The publication of this tract brought about the final break between Brownell and the Friend, and he devotes an entire chapter of Enthusiastical Errors to presenting his side of the story. Even before he wrote his religious treatise, Brownell claims to have become disillusioned with the Friend’s sect. As he put it, “I found there was in the nature of it, great ulcers and mortifications growing as within the community” and that among the prophet and his adherents “the house of Saul grew stronger and stronger, and the house of David, or the promotion of the truth, grew weaker.” Brownell recounts that when the Friend got wind of his intention to publish his religious views, the prophet had two disciples, James Parker and Mehitable Smith, question

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him about his book. They arrived at Brownell’s home on August 16, 1782, and discussed the matter with him. Brownell eventually agreed to let Parker and Smith read the manuscript, which was at a nearby printer being readied for publication, on the condition that they in no way interfered with the printing of the tract.51 It was at this point that the real trouble started. Brownell soon got word that Mehitable Smith, who the printer allowed to borrow the manuscript overnight, had failed to return it. Instead, she carried it forty miles away to Little Rest in order to give the prophet an opportunity to read it. Richard Smith, Mehitable’s brother, eventually returned the book, but Brownell was very upset that it had been taken away in the first place. He wrote a letter to Mehitable in which he threatened to make her act public unless she confessed to her wrongdoing. Not only did she refuse to comply, the Universal Friend with a number of his followers visited Brownell and took him to task for what they perceived as his sins; namely, that he had sought to publish his book without consulting the Comforter and that its contents were contrary to the prophet’s doctrine. At one point Brownell found himself having to sit “in the middle of the room, like a criminal,” surrounded by the Friend and a score of his adherents. In spite of this, Brownell refused to admit that he had wronged the Friend in any way. Having failed to bring the wayward disciple back into the fold, the meeting ended in an impasse, and Brownell and the Universal Friends parted ways.52 After this confrontation, Brownell apparently abandoned any efforts to promote himself as a religious visionary and returned to his search for spiritual leadership from others. In June 1784, he recorded that he heard the “Duty Call for Submitting to the ordinance of Baptism” and formally joined Silas Burrows’s Baptist congregation at Groton, Connecticut.53 Stability and order was the final reward that the Public Universal Friend offered to those who joined him. The guarantee of salvation represented an inestimable source of emotional security for converts. No matter what misfortune or setbacks befell them in this life, the prophet’s followers could rest easy in the knowledge that as long as they remained faithful, they could look forward to an eternity of bliss. On a more earthly level, the Comforter stood as a symbol of peace, guidance, and unfailing support—qualities that were especially valued in a time rent by war and revolution. In addition to serving as their spiritual leader, the Friend also functioned as an all-purpose source of advice and arbitration. That he served this role is made clear in a journal Ruth Pritchard kept while on her travels with the prophet. On April 16, 1785, she recorded that “the Friend had Daniel Brown & Jon Daniel & Jedediah Holmes together before a number of friends in order to settle some old difficulties

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which had subsisted some time” between them. The Friend was also a source of counsel on matters spiritual or otherwise. Abner Brownell claimed that the prophet’s followers asked his advice on all sorts of day-to-day issues. Women conferred with their leader about the “method of their cooking” or “how they shall have their cloaths made and about making their cloth,” while men asked “about all their secular affairs, even their farming business, and such small things that one would think a rational man would blush at.” Brownell’s judgmental tone aside, it is clear that the Friend’s disciples saw him not only as a spiritual guide, but as an advisor in their worldly affairs.54 Fellowship with the Universal Friend also offered security in the form of a social support network, for joining with the prophet brought the prospect of membership in a growing sectarian community. In a few cases, those who became adherents of the Friend did so at the cost of being shunned by family and friends. Sarah Richards was one such person. Abner Brownell, who claimed to have “left all Relations, and the promise of all Earthly possession” in order to follow the prophet, appears to be another. But, as has been already demonstrated, the vast majority of converts came, not as lone individuals, but as members of families and extended family groups.55 Joining the Society of Universal Friends, as with membership in the other sectarian movements of the late-eighteenth century, provided an opportunity to extend or reconstruct community and kin networks. The prophet’s disciples quickly intermarried with one another, reinforcing ties of religious affiliation with those of kinship. A few examples suffice to illustrate this larger pattern. The Potter family of South Kingston became connected by marriage to the Browns of Groton. Arnold Potter, the son of William Potter, married Sarah Brown, one of the Friend’s most trusted followers. Penelope Potter, one of Judge William Potter’s daughters, married Sarah Brown’s brother, Benjamin Brown Jr. The Wilkinson family also intermarried with other families in the sect, including the Potters, the Botsfords, and the Hartwells. Jemima Wilkinson’s youngest sister, Deborah, married Benajah Botsford, the son of Elnathan Botsford of New Milford. In addition, Elnathan’s daughter, Lucy, married Wilkinson’s brother, Stephen. Likewise, one of her other younger sisters, Elizabeth, married Samuel Hartwell. Members of the Botsford family intermarried with the Hathaways of New Bedford, with Elnathan Botsford’s daughter, Mary, marrying Thomas Hathaway Jr. In addition, Hannah Reynolds, the sister of fellow disciple John Reynolds, married another one of the Friend’s followers, Stephen Card.56 This litany of marriage bonds flies in the face of the accusation leveled by contemporaries that the Universal Friend was a home wrecker who separated husbands from their wives and parents from their children. Of course, there

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is some basis to this charge. The decision to join the prophet did sometimes result in the breakup of families. For example, Mary Gardener left her husband George in order to follow the Comforter. However, it is important to keep in mind that, though she left her husband, she became a disciple of the Friend alongside her sister Martha and brother John. More important, the Universal Friend did not seek to divide families and would have been happy to count George Gardener among his flock. That he chose not to join the sect, and his wife left him as a result, must be understood as an unintended consequence rather than the intent of the prophet’s ministry.57 The years immediately following Jemima Wilkinson’s reanimation as the Public Universal Friend saw the newborn prophet build a religious movement in which scores, then hundreds, of disciples joined together to proclaim the truth of the Comforter’s message and live by its dictates. Though they followed a prophet who was in many ways extraordinary, the Friend’s followers appear to be decidedly ordinary, and in terms of their demographic and socioeconomic profile, they had much in common with the general population. Such factors, therefore, do not seem to explain their decision to follow the prophet. The personal histories and spiritual desires of the Friend’s disciples explain why they cast in their lot with the Comforter. Although many Americans suffered from anxiety, setbacks, and insecurity as a result of the Revolutionary War, it seems that the Friend’s converts found in him a way of dealing with personal travails and social upheaval. The denominational background of converts is also a relevant factor. Instability among New England’s Quakers and New Lights as well as strong parallels between their doctrines and the Friend’s message meant that a high proportion of his followers came from these religious groups. In addition, the Universal Friend offered spiritual rewards that revolutionary-era Americans hungered for, as well as the support and security provided by a community of fellow believers. Thus the choice to enter into fellowship with the Public Universal Friend was primarily a religious response to a set of personal and spiritual needs. The prophet’s disciples were spiritual seekers living in an unstable world who were drawn to a message of salvation, power, and order.

Ch a p ter 3

Revelation And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars —Revelation 12:1

In November 1784, an eight-page pamphlet, The Universal Friend’s Advice to Those of the Same Religious Society, appeared in print. In it, the prophet sketched some of the religious doctrines and practices he espoused. The Comforter stressed that his converts had to abandon worldly pleasures in favor of spiritual perfection if they wanted to achieve salvation, enjoining, “If ye sow to the flesh, ye must, of the flesh, reap corruption; but if ye are so wise as to sow to the Spirit, ye will of the Spirit, reap life everlasting.” The holy messenger impressed on his disciples the need to honor and obey him if they wanted to gain entrance to the heavenly kingdom. He warned, “Ye cannot be my friends, except ye do whatsoever I command you: Therefore be not weary in well-doing, for, in due season, ye shall reap if ye faint not.” However, the primary focus of the Friend’s Advice was prescribing a set of behaviors, and the majority of the pamphlet details how converts should lead their daily lives and engage in worship. The prophet issued restrictions on how the faithful should dress, speak, and interact with nonbelievers. In addition, he advised his followers on how they should treat their fellow sect members, cautioning “let not contention, confusion, jarring, or wrong speaking have any place among you. Use not whisperings in meetings, for whisperers separate chief friends.” The pamphlet also detailed how parents and children as well as masters and servants should behave toward one another, with the Friend declaring that subordinates owed obedience to their superiors and superiors owed justice to their subordinates.1 54

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The late eighteenth century was a time of revelation as well as revolution, and Jemima Wilkinson was only one of several would-be prophets during this period who claimed to espouse a divinely inspired creed. Ann Lee, who came to America from England in 1774, considered herself Christ’s female counterpart; while Shadrack Ireland of Harvard, Massachusetts, not only engaged in prophecy but declared his own immortality. In a similar vein, Caleb Rich, the founder of the Universalist Church, claimed his doctrine was the outcome of a series of heaven-sent visions; and Benjamin Randall, a founder of the Freewill Baptists, asserted that his religious message was the product of a revelation he received from God in 1780. Other self-styled messengers of God included Noah White, a humble farmer from Massachusetts who received holy visions from angels, and David Austin, once a respectable Presbyterian preacher who heard the voice of the Father after battling a near fatal case of scarlet fever.2 A host of new religious sects besides the Society of Universal Friends also came into being during this period. Ann Lee founded the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or Shakers, in the late 1770s, while another religious visionary, Nathaniel Wood, formed the New Israelites of Middletown, Vermont, in the 1790s. Shadrack Ireland also drew a number of followers—a portion of whom joined the Shakers after his death shattered his claims of immortality. Many of these sects engaged in unorthodox forms of worship, practiced versions of “spiritual” marriage that contravened conventional social norms, and adhered to the perfectionist doctrine that it was possible to live a pure life free from sin. They also believed in the spiritual efficacy of dreams and visions and practiced faith healing. Most also nourished millennial expectations; they believed that the Apocalypse was nigh and prepared themselves, God’s chosen remnant, for Christ’s Second Coming.3 Exploring how the Universal Friend and his followers translated the prophet’s creed into a body of religious practice offers insight into this broader stream of sectarianism in revolutionary-era America. The Comforter advanced a coherent set of beliefs and behaviors that consistently drew on the religious traditions of Quakerism, New Light evangelism, and Christian millennialism. He also plunged into mysticism and, along with his disciples, engaged in faith healing, dabbled with exorcism, and communicated with God through dreams. These practices were not unique to the sect but drew on Quaker and New Light precedents and reflect larger trends in spiritual seeking during the late eighteenth century. Thus the Public Universal Friend’s ministry was both forward and backward looking. The religious ethos the prophet espoused looked back to the spiritual intensity of the early Quakerism and its roots in the radical sectarianism of mid-seventeenth

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century Britain. At the same time, the sect the Friend created looked forward to the forces of popular religiosity that reshaped American Christianity during the revolutionary era and beyond. Put another way, the tale of Jemima Wilkinson is as much an opening chapter in the story of the rise of a distinctly American religious culture as it is an epilogue to the long history of the radical Reformation in the Anglophone world.4

Doctrine The Public Universal Friend’s creed was sparse and, theologically speaking, not especially novel or innovative. Reverend Ezra Stiles attended one of the Friend’s meetings held in New Haven, Connecticut, in November 1787 and was more impressed by the number of people who attended than by his sermon, which he described as “preached or discoursed in the grave, tonic & unconnected Manner of the Friends or Quakers” and consisting of Biblical “texts repeated without Connextion.” Likewise, a man who heard the prophet preach in Philadelphia in 1782 observed that “her discourse seemed to us to be composed of commonplaces about the Bible and the Fathers.”5 The Friend did not invent the beliefs he espoused but drew on several religious traditions in formulating his views. Jemima Wilkinson was born and raised a Quaker, and the Society of Friends had a profound influence

Figure 1. The Universal Friend’s Bible. Photograph by author. Wilkinson Collection, Courtesy of the Yates County History Center, Penn Yan, NY.

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on her career as a prophet. This was a common refrain from those who encountered the Friend. Abner Brownell observed that he only needed to give a “short sketch” concerning the prophet’s doctrine, noting that it was “as to general tenor of it, much . . . in resemblance of the ancient Friends, or Quakers.” In a similar vein, an anonymous author in The Freeman’s Journal noted that the Comforter’s “preaching and praying . . . were wholly in the method of Friends or Quakers.”6 In addition, Wilkinson grew up in a corner of New England noted for its religious diversity and enthusiasm. Among the religious groups that rubbed elbows in Rhode Island and shaped her religious outlook were New Light Separates. A millennial ethos that transcended denominational bounds also influenced the Friend and inspired the apocalyptic tone of his ministry. Whatever the prophet’s message lacked in originality, it made up for in its consistency. In his sermons, the Friend habitually addressed a narrow range of topics. First, he struck at the core of Calvinist theology and its concept of predestination. Joining with a few other religious movements coming out of the New Light Stir and prefiguring the central theological debate of the Second Great Awakening, the Universal Friend preached a message of human free will. He held that every person had the ability to choose their own spiritual fate and rejected the Calvinist doctrine that God had predestined some for salvation and others for damnation.7 The notes Abner Brownell kept on the Friend’s sermons demonstrate the prophet’s advocacy of free will. At a meeting the prophet held in Warwick, Rhode Island, in October 1779, he chose Revelation 3:20 as his text: “Behold I Stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” According to Brownell, the holy messenger used the passage to illustrate “that man is a Free Agent to Act for himself that good and evil is Set before all, to which they are Left to the Freedom of their Choice, that the manifestation of the Spirit is given unto all.” Summarizing the Friend’s religious message, a convert by the name of Henry Barnes also highlighted this emphasis on human free will. He recounted that the Friend taught “that where there is a law, there is liberty to keep it or break it” and all people “came perfect and pure from God their Creator, and . . . remained so till they reached the years of understanding, and became old enough to know good from evil. At the age of responsible discretion, they enjoy Free Will, or the choice of good and evil.”8 The Comforter also challenged Calvinist orthodoxy by advancing the doctrine of universal salvation. This concept was closely connected to the idea of free will: if individuals were free to choose between salvation and damnation, then it was possible for all people to enter God’s kingdom. That

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heaven was open to everyone who had faith in God was a consistent theme in the Friend’s sermons. Abner Brownell attended a meeting held by the prophet in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, on May 18, 1780, at which he used Revelations 20:6 to show that “God had provided for the Redemption of all that would Repent, and Believe in him.” At another meeting in June of that year, the Friend gave a sermon in which he proclaimed, “What great love God had for a Dying world, not willing that any Should perish, but that all might come to the knowledge of the Truth and be Saved.” Ruth Pritchard, who also kept notes on the prophet’s sermons, recorded that he spoke of a God who “delighteth in Mercy” and observed that “as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that who soever believeth in him should not perish; but should have eternal life.” A corollary to the Friend’s creed of universal salvation was his rejection of the concept of Original Sin. Again, Brownell’s sermon notes demonstrate this point. After attending a meeting held at the home of Jeremiah Wilkinson in 1779, he wrote that the Friend’s sermon “was Spoken Largely upon that Certain point of Doctrine of Original Sin in Which was Shewn plainly both from Scripture and Right Reason, that every one has to Answer for his own Sins, by himself Commited, and that a Soul has no thing to Charge upon Adam.” In sum, the prophet advanced that people could make a positive choice to reject sin and follow a path to heaven unhindered by an ancient transgression committed in the Garden of Eden.9 According to the Friend, the road to eternal life may have been open but it was not easy, and all those who desired salvation had to possess an inexhaustible faith in and obedience to God and his holy messenger. Indeed, obedience is one theme that threads its way through The Universal Friend’s Advice and points to the premium the prophet placed on his followers’ acceptance of his authority. In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell recounts Wilkinson’s efforts to maintain her rule over her followers. He claimed she threatened that if they strove “against believing these Things [her teachings], they never will see no more Light, and that the Day of Grace and their Visitation will be over, and that if they do not attend her, they will reject the Counsel of God.”10 The notes that the Friend’s followers kept about his sermons confirm Brownell’s assertion. In May 1780, the prophet held a meeting during which he spoke on Jeremiah 7:28: “This is a Nation that obeyed not the Voice of the Lord their God, nor Receiveth correction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their Mouth.” The Comforter used this text to remind listeners that those who did “not obey the Voice of the Lord by the Messenger of whom he hath Sent” would not obtain salvation. In another sermon, the prophet made clear what would happen to people who did not put their trust in him,

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declaring that those who, “knew his Lords will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beated with many Stripes.”11 The message was plain: not believing in the Friend would result in divine punishment and, ultimately, damnation. The dangers of sin were another consistent theme of the Friend’s ministry. Thomas Hathaway Jr. recorded the prophet’s pronouncements on this topic in the journal he kept during his travels with the holy messenger. In one entry, he related a vision the prophet had in which “it was revealed to the great friend, that an island was swallowed up with five hundred youths under the age of twenty years, being not fit by wickedness for manhood, so God swept that from the face of the earth” and that “at the same instant the earth yawned and swallowed up a theatre full of sinning human souls.” In another sermon, the Friend reminded his listeners that “no man can serve two Masters . . . ye cannot serve God & Mamon,” mammon being the pursuit of worldly comforts and the attendant sins of greed and lust. The prophet also espoused on the perils of sin in his private correspondence. In a letter to David Wagener penned in September 1787, he warned against wrongdoing with a reference to the sin-soaked city of the biblical Canaanites, saying, “Tarry not in all the plains of Sodom, for there is no place there for the soul to sit down to rest in.”12 The greatest evil of sin, according to the Comforter, was that it separated people from God and spoiled their chance at salvation. The Friend often featured Isaiah 59:2 to emphasize this point: “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” The prophet also advanced this element of his doctrine at a meeting in Cumberland, Rhode Island, stating “that those that are a going in Sin, and Iniquity, are a Sleeping and Slumbering away their precious time” that could be better spent seeking God’s grace. Henry Barnes summed up the Friend’s views, observing that he warned that sin would “forfeit title to Heaven and happiness.”13 In addition to avoiding sin, the prophet taught that salvation depended on a person’s sincere repentance. This point was a regular feature of the Friend’s pronouncements. In 1779 Elijah Brown wrote that Wilkinson’s claim that “she was A servant of God, to warne A wicked world to turne from thare Evel corsis & to Live A Life to God . . . ware the Chief drift” of her discourse. A year later, Abner Brownell described meetings during which the Comforter urged those present “to forsake their evil ways and turn unto the Lord,” observing “that the Doctrine of Repentance was now preach’d and urged in the most melting terms.” In addition, Ruth Pritchard recounted how in one meeting the prophet stood and said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding,” and

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in another urged his listeners “to repentance & amendment of life, before the fierce anger of the Lord be poured out upon them.” This emphasis on God-fearing repentance also appears in The Friend’s Advice: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, redeeming your time, because the days are evil.” The prophet liked to remind his listeners at regular meetings and funerals that death could come at any moment and that all should fear dying in an unrepentant state. Once again, Henry Barnes best encapsulated the Friend’s views on this matter when he recalled that the holy messenger believed the only remedy for damnation was “to repent and pray to God for pardon.”14 It terms of both its style and content, the Universal Friend’s religious message drew heavily from the Quakers. The main pillars of his doctrine—human free will and the possibility of universal salvation—were concepts central to Quaker theology. The idea that all people were moral free agents who could gain salvation through faith and righteousness was a corollary of the central concept of the Quaker faith: that all people contained the spirit of God, the “inner light,” within them. The Friend’s deemphasis on finely wrought theology in favor of simple, spontaneous revelation was also in keeping with the leveling, anti-intellectual spirit of early Quakerism. Moreover, the very tone of the Friend’s ministry—its dramatic tension between reforming the world and standing clear of it—found a precedent in the Society of Friends. In many ways, the Friend sought to recapture the spiritual energy of early Quakerism, when its seventeenth-century founders, George Fox and Margaret Fell, turned the world upside down with their beliefs.15 The emphasis the prophet placed on followers’ submission to his authority found precedent in the Society of Friends system of church discipline, which required its members to obey a strict set of rules concerning dress, speech, and worship. It is noteworthy that the Quakers’ determination to enforce these rules increased in the decades immediately preceding Jemima Wilkinson’s rebirth as a prophet, giving even more credence to the idea that the Friend’s focus on discipline was rooted in her Quaker upbringing. The prophet’s doctrine did not, however, always adhere to Quaker principles and practices. The Comforter’s declaration that he served as God’s mouthpiece, while inspired by the Quaker belief that the Bible was not the Lord’s final word and that he could speak through the prophetic visions of the faithful, ultimately challenged this tradition. By claiming that he was the only source religious truth, the Friend undercut the legitimacy of prophecy among others.16 Concepts drawn from New England’s radical New Lights also shaped the Friend’s creed. This influence was close at hand for the young Jemima Wilkinson, and a Separate congregation had existed right in her own childhood home of Cumberland, Rhode Island, in the 1740s and 1750s. This

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group of religious seekers, led by Solomon Prentice and his wife Sarah (who eventually became an adherent of Shadrack Ireland), held a number of unorthodox religious views and practices, including a form of “spiritual” marriage that contravened the traditional bonds of matrimony.17 There is no need for conjecture over whether or not Wilkinson was exposed to New Light theology, for the Smithfield Quakers disowned her, not only for failing to appear at their meetings, but for attending those of a New Light congregation at Abbot Run.18 Though in terms of specific doctrines, such as human freewill and universal salvation, the Friend’s religious message leaned heavily on Quakerism, some of the underlying themes of his ministry had New Light roots. The Comforter’s commitment to inspired religion, emphasis on sin and righteous behavior, and opposition to the religious status quo all reflected the evangelical outlook. Like the prophet, New Lights stressed that salvation came, not through adherence to rote religious rituals presided over by a professional clergy, but through God’s saving grace, heartfelt repentance, and a commitment to godly behavior. The Friend’s jeremiads against false prophets and godless ministers also parallel the evangelicals’ attack on “unconverted” ministers and state-supported religion. Warnings of an approaching Apocalypse—the cataclysm surrounding Christ’s return when he would separate the saved from the damned—were another central feature of the Universal Friend’s creed.19 Like the other aspects of his religious message, this theme was hardly original and threaded its way through a number of religious traditions, including Quakerism. Prophets had been warning humankind that they were on the eve of the Second Coming since the Book of Revelation found its way into the Bible. The Friend was in especially good company in this respect during the Revolution. Clergymen and religious visionaries across the colonies believed that the fight for American independence marked the unfolding of Revelation’s prophecies. The only thing that divided the Comforter’s doctrine from the millennial mainstream was that he perceived the Revolution, not as a positive event that would usher in Christ’s thousand-year kingdom on Earth, but as a divine punishment that marked the advent of an even more catastrophic Final Judgment.20 Millennialism was deeply rooted in Christianity, and the Old Testament books of Daniel and Isaiah and the New Testament Book of Revelation provided its biblical foundations. While theologians disagreed over the interpretation of these texts, there was a broad consensus over what the millennium entailed: the conclusion of God’s providential plan for humankind and a grand struggle between the forces of good and evil. Biblical scholars linked this cosmic coda to Christ’s promised return and his establishment

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of a heavenly kingdom on earth that would last for a thousand years (hence the term “millennialism”). This second incarnation of Christ would not be the meek lamb of God portrayed in the Gospels, but a martial figure who would lead the armies of heaven and defeat Satan’s legions at the battle of Armageddon. Millennialists believed that Christ’s earthly reign would also include a last judgment, when the Messiah would separate the saved from the damned, taking the former to his side and leaving the latter to perish.21 From the time of the early Christian church, scholars poured over the obscure symbolism of the Bible’s prophetic texts in an attempt to divine the exact course and timing of the Second Coming. Although this millennial discourse waxed and waned, it was still very much alive during the eighteenth century. Divining apocalyptic prophecies was a prominent pastime among American intellectuals. Seventeenth-century New England’s premier clergyman, Cotton Mather, plumbed the depths of the Book of Revelation, while the leading New England theologian of the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards, began keeping a journal in 1723 entitled “Notes on the Apocalypse,” to which he added material for the rest of his life. The imperial wars and Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century served to fuel the fires of millennial inquiry, and Timothy Dwight, John Livingston, and Joseph Priestly were among the more prominent men who dabbled in this pursuit into its closing decades.22 The American Revolution served to reenergize millennial expectations. Clergymen and laypeople alike saw parallels between the turbulent events swirling around them and the breaking of the seven seals, the blowing of the seven trumpets, and the pouring of the seven vials of wrath mentioned in the Book of Revelation. By the time of the colonies’ conflict with Britain, millennial thinkers held that the seals, trumpets, and vials were symbolic references to wars, political conflict, plague, famine, and natural disasters that would mark the advent of the Apocalypse. Many Americans came to believe that they were witnessing these tumultuous omens and that their fledging nation was to play a critical role in the defeat of the Antichrist. Some even held that the woman of light who fled into the wilderness mentioned in Revelation 12:6 was actually a symbolic reference to the United States and the colonists who had escaped Europe for the “wilderness” of the New World. Despite the ominous overtones of the prophecies contained in the Book of Revelation, the mood of much of the revolutionary-era’s millennial discourse was positive, and Americans influenced by it believed that the Revolutionary War would end in victory and usher in a thousand years of peace, glory, and happiness.23

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Though everyone agreed the millennium would come, there was sharp disagreement over its tone and the ordering of events that would lead to it. Millennialist thinkers can be divided into two camps: “premillennialists” and “postmillennialists.” Postmillennialists believed that Christ’s Second Coming would occur after the establishment of a thousand-year kingdom of heaven on earth. Premillennialists, in contrast, asserted that Christ’s return and tumultuous last judgment would take place before the realization of God’s earthly kingdom. The postmillennial outlook—which was the majority view in revolutionary America—was the more optimistic of the two in the sense that it stressed human agency in bringing about the Second Coming. It emphasized the positive elements of the millennium and envisioned it as a gradual process brought about by human progress. The premillennial outlook was out of step with this view and proposed a far more fearsome vision. It asserted that apocalyptic destruction would attend Christ’s return and only after this travail would Christ lead the elect to millennial triumph. This doctrine tended to devalue human agency and emphasized sudden, cataclysmic events propelled by divine action. Premillennialists hung their interpretation on the more dark and dire passages of the Book of Revelation. They had plenty of material to draw from: out of its twenty-two chapters, only six verses focus on Christ’s return and millennial salvation, the balance mostly describes the catastrophes and suffering that would precede it.24 The Society of Universal Friends was among a number of sectarian movements that, in adopting a premillennial outlook, stood outside the religious mainstream. The revolutionary era was a time of heightened religious expectation in New England, and during this period a number of groups arose that embraced a premillennial view of the Second Coming. Besides the Universal Friends, they include the Come-Outers of Gorham, Maine; the Shakers; the New Lights of New Lebanon, New York; Shadrack Ireland’s Massachusetts-based following; and the New Israelities of Middletown, Vermont. These sects, contrary to more optimistically minded postmillennialists, saw the American Revolution, not as a sign of impending bliss, but as an omen that the world was on the brink of the punishing tribulations spoken of in Revelation.25 Jemima Wilkinson placed herself at the center of this cosmic drama, believing that she had a central part in the advent of the Apocalypse. There was a specifically Quaker strain of millennial thought that likely inspired her transformation into a holy messenger. Drawing on Joel 2:28–29—“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy”—Quaker founder Margaret Fell believed women had a special role to play in the millennium and that the

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very act of female prophecy signaled its advent. Thus Wilkinson’s taking on the prophetic persona of the Universal Friend, in itself, constituted evidence that the Second Coming was imminent. In light of this, it is not surprising that apocalyptic imagery featuring the dark prophecies found in the biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, and Revelation pervaded the Friend’s preaching. Ruth Pritchard described one Sabbath-day meeting in which the Friend’s sermon focused on Isaiah 13:9–11: “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. . . . And I will punish the world for their evil.” Abner Brownell observed that the Comforter expounded on “many passages of scripture, but mostly what the prophets spake of in prophecying of the coming of the Messiah.”26 No mere harbinger of things to come, the Friend and his disciples held themselves to be key players in the final battle between good and evil. This link between the prophet’s ministry and apocalyptic prophecy also gives credence to the claims that the Friend believed that the end of the world would occur forty-two months after God placed him in the body of Jemima Wilkinson, or in April 1780. A passage from Revelation 11:2—“and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months”—was the basis of this prediction. Given this millennial foreboding, it makes perfect sense that the prophet and his adherents attached apocalyptic significance to New England’s Dark Day, the seemingly supernatural blotting out of the Sun, which occurred only a month after they assumed the world would come to an end.27 Some of the Universal Friend’s leading followers may have also seen themselves as figures foretold in the Bible’s apocalyptic prophecies. There is some evidence that Sarah Richards and James Parker believed for a time that they were the two witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation: “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth” (Revelation 11:3). Several pieces appearing in Philadelphia’s The Freeman’s Journal mention the pair’s pretension. An article appearing on February 14, 1787, observed that the Friend had “attendants of the extraordinary kind also, and those attendants are said to be the two witnesses which are prophesied of by John the divine in the Revelations” and identified Richards and Parker as the two persons. The article further observed that Richards, in keeping with her assumed identity, was “clothed in what they call sackcloth . . . in which she is to fulfill the days of her prophecy.” Six weeks later, another article appeared in the newspaper in which the author claimed to have a letter written by James Parker to an anonymous young woman in which he stated, “Be sure the Lords two witnesses will due all in their power for thy good and the good of every soul so

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long as they have power to prophesie.” The writer also said that he possessed the young woman’s reply, in which she answered, “I hope the Lord’s two witnesses prayers will not be wanting at the throne of grace to assist me to find the way to happiness, and I earnestly desire to be with the Lord’s two witnesses.” In all fairness it should be mentioned that the article’s author never produced the alleged letters, and a rebuttal to these charges appeared in the March 14 issue of The Freeman’s Journal, claiming that Parker did “not assent to such untruths” as to him being one of the witnesses of Revelation.28 The Public Universal Friend preached a doctrine that was simple, coherent, but unoriginal. Though the prophet retained an orthodox Trinitarian creed, he rejected the concept of original sin and Calvinist predestination in favor of the idea of human free will and the possibility of universal salvation. However, the path to heaven was not an easy one. It required the sincere rejection of sin and absolute faith in God, Jesus, and the Universal Friend. His message also presented darker themes. The Comforter warmed that Judgment Day was near and that the door to salvation would soon be closed. As he stated at the end of the Universal Friend’s Advice, “THE time is fulfilled—the kingdom of GOD is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the Gospel.” In sum, the Friend portrayed himself as God’s instrument whose divine mission was to lead an “eleventh hour” effort to regenerate humankind before the world descended into an apocalyptic abyss.29

Practice Although the Universal Friend did not develop an elaborate collection of rituals for his adherents to follow, he did proscribe a set of behaviors that gave his sect form. One area in which the prophet provided guidance was procedures for worship. The Universal Friend’s Advice presents clear directives concerning how believers were to conduct their meetings. The Comforter directed that they start “as near as possible” to ten o’clock in the morning and that those attending should be “punctual.” The pamphlet does not mention a specific day that was to be set aside for formal worship, and it appears that there may have been some flexibility on this point. Journals kept by the prophet’s followers during the early years of his ministry show that the Friend held Sunday as the Sabbath. However, by the time the sect had set up their religious community in New York, it appears that the group, in keeping with Judaic tradition, honored Saturday as the Sabbath and primary day of worship, though they also observed Sunday as a day of rest. In addition, the prophet did not restrict worship to either of these two days. Especially during the opening phases of his mission when the Friend crisscrossed southern

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New England in search of converts, he held meetings several times a week or even daily.30 As for the nature of worship itself, meetings took a number of formats. Sometimes they featured a biblical text and sermon presented by the Friend and followed a set of conventions that approached a liturgy. Worship began in silence and it seems that disciples could speak if the spirit took them, but only after the prophet had his say. On other occasions, converts gathered for less formal prayer meetings and silent devotions during which people spoke if moved by the Holy Spirit. It is clear that silence was just as important as speaking when it came to worship. Elijah Brown, who attended a number of the Friend’s meetings in 1779, observed, “I was at 4 meetings 2 of which ware silent for neare a full hour & then she rose [and] stood for about 2 hour.” The Universal Friend’s Advice told those who attended meetings to “make as little stir as possible” in order not to “disturb the solemn meditations of others.” More tellingly, it enjoined sect members to “gather in all your wandering thoughts, that you may sit down in solemn silence, to wait for the aid and assistance of the HOLY SPIRIT, and not speak out vocally in meetings, except ye are moved thereunto by the HOLY SPIRIT.” In keeping with this emphasis on quiet, the group’s meetings never featured hymn singing. They also ended in silence, with everyone shaking hands with each other.31 The simplicity and modesty exhibited in worship extended into practices concerning speech and dress. The emphasis on silence and eliminating unnecessary or immodest speech was not just in force on the Sabbath. The Friend implored his followers to maintain “plainness of speech” and avoid “fooling talking, and vain jesting, with all unprofitable conversation.” The prophet also expected them to embrace plainness and modesty when it came to dress, declaring, “Let your adorning not be outward, but inward.” These rejoinders concerning dress seemed to have the desired effect. A defense of the Society of Universal Friends that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal in 1787 asserted that “as for her [Wilkinson’s] attendants . . . the females (outside robe excepted) with the men friends may safely and with propriety challenge the strictest of Friends, or Quakers, for decency and plainness.”32 The image the passage presents is of a group of people who wore clothing in subdued colors cut with economy and without any form of ornamentation.33 Beyond these injunctions on speech and dress, the Public Universal Friend called for restrictions on behavior that would have been familiar to more mainstream Christian denominations. He emphasized the need to reject bodily pleasures in the pursuit of spiritual salvation. In The Universal Friend’s Advice, the prophet declared, “If ye sow to the flesh, ye must, of the flesh, reap corruption; but if ye are so wise as to sow to the Spirit, ye will of

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the Spirit, reap life everlasting.” In place of excess, the Comforter advised moderation and clean living, saying, “Ye ought to be temples for the HOLY SPIRIT to dwell in; and, if your vessels are unclean, that which is holy cannot dwell in you.” Along these lines, the prophet told his disciples to “be not drunk with wine, or any other spirituous liquors, wherein is excess.” Likewise, he frowned on smoking. The Friend, however, did not require total abstinence, and the prophet himself drank wine from time to time. Besides sobriety and moral purity, the holy messenger focused on cleanliness. The Friend followed an exacting regime of personal hygiene (he only wore freshly laundered and pressed clothing and had a daily habit of washing his body and hair) and enjoined his followers to do the same.34 The prophet also urged his disciples to have as little contact with nonbelievers as possible and to “flee from bad company as from a serpent.” When interaction with the “wicked world” was unavoidable, the Comforter advised, “Do your business with few words, and retire from them as soon as you can get your business done.” In addition to avoiding contact with the unregenerate, the Universal Friend expected those in his sect to maintain peace, harmony, and cooperation among themselves and to “deal justly with all men, and to unto all men as you would be willing they should do unto you.”35 Like many of their beliefs, the Universal Friends’ religious practices and codes of behavior had clear Quaker roots. The Friend and his followers took their dress, mode of address (using “thee” and “thou” instead of the more common “you”), and habit of designating days and months with numbers instead of using their pagan-inspired names whole cloth from the Society of Friends. In the same vein, the Friend’s admonishments against drunkenness, lewd behavior, and keeping bad company all had precedents in Quaker opposition to drinking, dancing, the theater, and other worldly pleasures. The practice of silent worship, use of “plain speech,” opposition to slavery, rejection of baptism and communion as sacraments, and spontaneous exhorting also had Quaker foundations.36 There was one more point of practice dealing with the body that the Friend weighed in on: sex and celibacy. Some contemporaries claimed that the prophet attempted to ban marriage and sex among his followers. Thomas Morris, who met the Friend in 1794, asserted that she “prohibited her followers from marrying; and even those who had joined her after having been united in wedlock, were made to separate, and live apart from each other.” In a similar vein, the Reverend Thomas Smith reported that “those who join her Church must pledge themselves to live singly, and if they have families they must abandon their wives and children.” The descendants of Thomas Hathaway Jr. also passed down the story that when he married Mary

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Botsford, the daughter of fellow Universal Friend Elnathan Botsford, the prophet “excommunicated” both of them for breaking his ban on marriage. That Wilkinson never married and—contrary to several unfounded stories concerning salacious affairs with men—lived a celibate life seems to lend credence to this point of view.37 A more sensitive appraisal shows that the Friend’s stance on the issue of marriage and sex was not so clear cut. Unlike the Shakers, who made celibacy a central tenet of their faith, the prophet never made the practice as a mainstay of his message, and thus his views on wedlock and intercourse remain somewhat uncertain. Abner Brownell’s Enthusiastical Errors makes it clear that the prophet’s opposition to marriage was far from absolute. It states that the Friend only supported marriages initiated by “her approbation and direction” and opposed all those that were lust-driven as “works of the flesh.” Brownell insinuates that the prophet played favorites, freely giving his blessing to his sisters’ marriages while denying it to equally deserving couples. Though he disparaged her motives and portrayed Wilkinson’s opposition to marriage as driven by a hunger for power, Brownell does attest that she did not oppose all such unions.38 The Friend considered celibacy to be a spiritually superior state but did not oppose marriage on principle. As with mainstream Christian denominations, chapter 7 of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians served as the biblical foundation to the prophet’s views on marriage. A portion of the first verse— “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”—seems to promote the practice of celibacy. However, the next verse—“Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband”—helped the Friend, like the Apostle Paul, come to the conclusion that it was “better to marry than to burn.” What the Comforter opposed was not marriage or sex, but lust. This attitude found support in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. Chapter 5, verse 17 states, “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.” Among the lustful “works of the flesh” (Galatians 5:19) Paul warned against were adultery, fornication, and lasciviousness. It was these moral offenses, not marriage or intercourse itself, that the prophet censured. This interpretation is consistent with day-to-day practice within the Society of Universal Friends. Many who joined the group were married and remained so after their conversion. Other sect members became married and had children after joining the prophet. Even if the story about the Friend excommunicating Thomas Hathaway Jr. and Mary Botsford upon their marriage is true, it probably had more to do with the holy messenger’s feelings toward the couple than it did his stance on the institution of marriage.39

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Celibacy, though not commonly associated with Quakers, was also an element of their culture. Though the denomination never explicitly promoted celibacy as a point of doctrine, it implicitly legitimized the decision not to marry or have children. While Quakers did not see marriage as an unholy state, they did not think that it was necessary to be a good Christian. The Society of Friends believed marriage was sanctified when it served to promote religious goals but held that it was better to remain single than marry to satisfy carnal desire or material ends. By supporting a significant cohort of full-time, traveling female preachers, the Quakers also provided opportunities for women to live outside of the conventional female roles of wife, mother, and homemaker. Not only that, but for at least some Quaker women, wedlock seemed to be at odds with the Society of Friends’ emphasis on eschewing sinful hierarchies of sex, class, and race that divided people into masters and subordinates. Their solution was simply to avoid becoming a wife and, instead, embrace a spiritually inspired spinsterhood. Marriage rates among eighteenth-century Friends reflect this. For instance, among Quaker women in Pennsylvania’s Plainfield and Rahway meetings before 1786, almost 10 percent had not married by the age of fifty and most of these women likely never entered into wedlock—a far higher proportion than in the general population. It also seems that at least some Quakers entertained the perfectionist stance of equating celibacy with moral purity and salvation. For example, Quaker preacher Joseph Nicholson and his wife visited Salem, Massachusetts, in 1660 and found Friends there opposed to all sexual relations between husbands and wives. Nicholson reported that “an old couple from Rhode Island,” probably also Quakers, had spread this idea.40 Quakerism also furnished precedents for female religious leadership among the Universal Friends. Sarah Richards, Ruth Pritchard, and others among the prophet’s female followers spoke during meetings, preached in public gatherings, prophesied, and occupied positions of authority.41 The signature Quaker concept—that all people possessed the inner light of God— provided a theological foundation for such behavior. From its inception, the Quaker movement encouraged female spiritual agency and opened a path for the emergence of strong female leaders such as Margaret Fell. The early Quakers rejected a formal clergy and relied on lay preachers among whose ranks included many women. This feature of the Society of Friends only increased over time. By 1800 almost 50 percent of preachers in Philadelphia’s yearly meeting were women. Likewise, in the London yearly meeting, female preachers equaled or exceeded the number of male public friends. Moreover, the existence of women’s monthly meetings that complemented men’s meetings and policed moral issues and marriage within the Society

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of Friends certainly provided a venue for substantial female involvement in community and church affairs. On both sides of the Atlantic, female Friends either delayed or avoided marriage in order to pursue a spiritual calling, and married Quaker women set aside their duties as wives and mothers in order to travel and preach.42 The Quaker reformation of the mid-eighteenth century reinforced the denomination’s challenge to mainstream gender norms and provided a more immediate example of female empowerment to the Friend and his disciples. Quaker reformers worked to reverse a growing separation of religious and social issues perceived as female concerns from a more masculine realm of politics and economic life. This ran counter to the feminization of religious life taking place in other Protestant denominations in the late eighteenth century. Many Protestant churches faced a reality in which women dominated membership and, as a result, they found their authority frequently limited to a set of issues—spiritual life, family, children, and charity—that society increasingly defined as female. In turn, they were losing their purchase on areas of daily life—commerce and politics—gendered as masculine. The advocates of the Quaker reformation countered this, contending that the values of love, humility, and philanthropy transcended sex and that religion was inseparable from politics and economics. This helped to stave off any effort to marginalize women in the Society of Friends. It also enabled Quaker men and women to construct gendered identities that were increasingly at odds with mainstream society.43 The Society of Universal Friends was in harmony with these developments. They, like the Quaker reformers, sought to erase any line between spiritual concerns and everyday life and deemphasized the difference between masculine and feminine—especially in the realm of religion. The New Lights also provided models of female spirituality and religious authority. Radical evangelicals rejected the Pauline injunction against women speaking in church, and during the Great Awakening, New Light women engaged in public preaching. Women not only spoke, they also voted on church matters and organized their own religious meetings. New Lights articulated a more positive vision of womanhood, praising women for their piety and even portraying it as superior to that of men. On a deeper level, the evangelical movement involved forms of religious expression commonly perceived as feminine. The New Lights’ emphasis on emotionalism, the believer’s submission to Christ, and the privileging of instinctual religious insight over well-reasoned points of doctrine were all aspects of a feminine spirituality.44 As the insurgent New Lights matured and institutionalized themselves, they shed many of their more radical gender innovations, such

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as women preaching and voting on church matters.45 However, during the genesis of the Universal Friend’s holy mission, they still represented a challenge to conventional gender norms. Besides the roles of men and women, the New Lights informed a wide range of the Universal Friends’ practices. The Comforter’s preaching tours, though certainly consistent with the activities of Quaker public friends, also drew on the evangelicals’ avid use of itinerant ministers. The style of the Friend’s preaching also followed New Light precedents, for like the Quakers, they expected their ministers to engage in spontaneous, inspired preaching rather than read prepared sermons featuring well-spun theological arguments. These features of the evangelical movement touch on a broader anticlerical and anti-intellectual ethic it also shared with the Universal Friend. Moreover, the New Lights provided a clear model for the prophet’s emphasis on righteous behavior and holy deportment. In another parallel with the evangelicals, the Society of Universal Friends developed elaborate rules for behavior— including injunctions against drunkenness, lewdness, profanity, and dishonesty. The New Lights’ radical fringe also entertained the sort of perfectionist beliefs the prophet’s sect expressed through the practice of celibacy.46 There were, however, a few areas where the Universal Friends and the New Lights diverged. For instance, the holy messenger and his followers never embraced the highly expressive, almost frenzied quality of the Separates’ worship, preferring instead the temperance and quietism of the Quakers.

Mysticism Religious practice for the Universal Friend and his followers went beyond modes of worship and strictures on behavior into the realm of the mystical. Faith healing, exorcism, and prophetic dreams all found a home within the prophet’s sect. Though he seems to have dropped faith healing from his repertoire by the mid-1780s, the Comforter engaged in this practice early on in his ministry. In this respect, the opening years of the Friend’s mission paralleled an emphasis on miraculous cures exhibited by the radical fringe of New England’s New Light movement. Reverend Ezra Stiles recounted how before an audience at Dighton, Massachusetts, the Friend prayed over “a woman long confined to her bed by Infirmities” and raised her “from off her bed & led her across the room which she had not done long before.” Unfortunately for the sick woman, “Mrs. Dagget a noisy religionist began a warm Dispute with Jemima, & she left the Miracle unfinished and poor Mrs. ____ Limbs are as fixt as ever & she returned to her Confinement in bed.” The prophet also attempted to heal William Potter’s mentally ill, seventeen-year-old son, William Jr. His psychosis

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was so severe that the Potter family kept his hands bound and one of his feet chained to the floor of his room. According to Abner Brownell, the Friend tried to cure him and seemed to have done so, “and there was a great noise of a miracle.” However, William Jr. suffered a relapse a year later. Reverend Stiles recorded that Alice Potter Hazard also tried her hand at healing her brother by performing an exorcism, demonstrating that some of the prophet’s disciples joined him in attempts at supernatural healing. Alice reportedly “went in to her Brother & found him asleep & chained” and “undertook to cast out the Devil.” Surrounded by other members of the Society who knelt in prayer, “she prostrated herself upon him, putting her mouth to his face and prayed till he awoke and arose, when she said she had cast out seven Devils from her Brother.” In spite of Alice’s claims, William Jr. never regained his sanity.47 In addition to faith healing, the Universal Friend engaged in prophecy, but unlike the former practice, this one endured throughout his ministry. The parts of the Bible the prophet habitually returned to in his sermons reflect this prophetic turn. The books of Daniel, Joel, and Isaiah from the Old Testament and, not surprisingly, Revelation from the New are full of obscure prophecies that the Friend featured in his preaching. Abner Brownell recalled how Wilkinson sought to gain converts through “her Prophesies, and foretelling of future Events” as well as her claim to “having a Spirit of Discerning and knowing all Things as . . . was done in the Days of the Prophets of old.” He also recounted how the Friend used prophecies contained in Daniel 12:11–12 and Revelation 11:2 and 12:6 to assert that he was “the women spoken of in the revelations, that was now fled into the wilderness” and that his arrival marked the advent of when “the peaceable reign would be visibly commenced, and all the ungodly would be destroyed from off the earth.” The Comforter not only professed to have insight into the unfolding cosmic drama of the Apocalypse, but also knowledge of the futures and fates of individuals. In this sense his claim to prophetic power reached into the realm of divination.48 As with the power of healing, the gift of prophecy extended to some of the Universal Friend’s followers. According to Reverend Stiles, Alice Potter Hazard became convinced of her own prophetic prowess and predicted in September 1779 that “the day of Judgement [was] to come in half a year.” Sarah Richards also earned a reputation for the powers of divination and necromancy. An article appearing in The Freeman’s Journal tells that she was “subject to a particular kind of fit in which she appears for some time dead, upon her recovering, she pretends she has conversed with the dead.” It also observed that “the angel Raphael is her guardian angel, and at some times when she is in those fits, (or as they term them, views), she is conducted

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by Raphael to distant parts of this world, and there sees what mankind are doing.” The allegation spread that several of the Friend’s leading disciples answered to the names of biblical prophets in recognition of their ability to foretell future events and discern God’s will. Sarah Richards took on the name Daniel, James Parker that of Elijah, and Rachel Malin, Enoch. A third, unnamed female follower supposedly gained the title, “John the Beloved.” Though it is consistent with the religious enthusiasm that marked the early years of the prophet’s Society, this story is not corroborated in writings penned by members of the sect—nowhere do they discuss such heavenly alter egos or designate each other using these biblical names.49 Connected to this focus on prophecy was the Universal Friends’ belief that dreams and visions could serve as a source of spiritual insight. This view was rooted in the Bible. Whether it be God speaking to Abraham in a vision (Genesis 15) or to Solomon in a dream (I Kings, 3), the Old Testament contains many passages in which God communicated with people through such supernatural means. Genesis 41 recounts that the pharaoh of Egypt suffered from nights of disturbing dreams and called on Joseph to interpret them after all the other wise men in the land failed to unlock their meaning. Likewise, Job, speaking of the afflictions that God had sent against him, laments, “Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions” ( Job 7:14).50 In keeping with biblical authority, the Friend and his adherents believed that dreams that occurred during sleep or visions that came on them while awake could convey divine messages. Some of these related to the spiritual state of individuals, while others contained communications meant for a wider audience. The sect’s embrace of prophetic dreaming was also rooted in Quaker and New Light culture. In their belief in the spiritual efficacy of dreams, the prophet and his followers were no different from evangelical Christians for whom dreams and visions had become an accepted feature of religious devotion since the Great Awakening.51 More important to the sect’s understanding of dreams were a number of Quaker precedents. Since its inception, the Society of Friends was committed to the concept that people could receive divine communications through visions. Such mysticism was a pronounced feature of the early Quaker movement, and its leadings figures, including Quaker founder George Fox, received revelatory messages. By the eighteenth century, the Society of Friends maintained a well-established tradition of spiritually charged dreams and dream interpretation.52 Like the Quakers, the prophet and his disciples kept journals in which they recorded their visions. Frequently their dreams were short and ambiguous. For example, Rachel Malin noted that on January 3, 1812, “The Friend dreamed that a man

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come to the Friend hous and sed tidings tidings tidings.” In many cases, brief mentions of dreams and visions can be found tucked in among more mundane diary entries concerning the weather, transactions of goods, or distances traveled. One of Sarah Richards’s journals contains the following entry: “Appoint to go to George Wilsons . . . my dear Mary has the Ague and is quite sick Sarah Wilson visits us Mary Jones also,” which simply concludes, “in the evening have a Vision.”53 The Universal Friend’s disciples preserved detailed descriptions of what they considered their more noteworthy dreams. These narratives revolve around a common set of themes that mirror the main elements of the prophet’s message: salvation, the Apocalypse, and the importance of rejecting worldly concerns in favor of spiritual ones. Dreams featuring visits to heaven, encounters with Christ, and the promise of salvation were common among the Universal Friends. Desire Miller experienced such a vision on April 12, 1787. The anonymous author who recorded Miller’s experience described how she lay in bed ill “for some time as if the Breath had left her Boddy.” She then “appeared to be strugling Like one strugling for Life but did not appear to have any knowledge of any one that was around her Bed But lay like one that was lost in wonder,” lifting her arms to heaven and crying out to the Lord. The account continues that she stayed in this state for more than an hour, “then seemed to come to herself ” and related a heavenly vision. Desire claimed that Jesus came to her dressed in white robes stained with blood and “purple gore” and spoke to her. Next, two angels took her by the hand and bore her through the sky to a “Blooming Garden, the walls of which were transparent glass clear as crystal and shown with brighter luster than most fine Gold.” Her angelic guides led her up a golden stairway to a place where she beheld “an innumberable Company of the heavenly host” and a throne “on which the supreme being sat.” Christ then read from the book of judgment and declared “thy sins are forgiven thee.” Finally, Miller, mimicking some of the words the Friend used to describe his holy mission, related that she “was then told I must return Back to earth again and be faithful in warning the people and tell them to flee the wrath to come.” Before returning, she also obtained a glimpse of Hell where she “heard their groans and cries which ware to shocking to express” and encountered the Devil, who offered her “gold and silver in abundance” if she would worship him. Miller rejected the offer, declaring that she would not sell her soul for money as Judas did. Less than five months before her death, one of the Friend’s early adherents, Susannah Potter, related a dream with similar themes. In it, the “Blessed Saviour clothed in white” led her through an orchard to a burying ground where she “saw a new grave dug which I no sooner see, than I was

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sensible it was made for me, but did not feel the least discomposed in mind but entirely easy.” Though certainly a premonition of her death—Susannah was already suffering from the illness that would soon take her life—her dream also conveys confidence in her ultimate salvation.54 Apocalyptic imagery was another common theme in their dreams. The Friend’s visions certainly betray a preoccupation with the Final Judgment. In April 1789, he had a dream in which “a large pair of Scales let down to the earth, the cords held out of sight by an Invisible hand—To weigh the Mountains in Scales, and the hills in a Balance: To way all the inhabitants of the Earth, all that the Lord calls to Judgement!” Another of the prophet’s dreams featured a man “about 10 feet high, cloathed in a garment down to the feet, of a Scarlet Coular” who “presented a large Scroll in which was writtin Lamentation, mourning & woe! Famine, Sword, and Pestilence For the Lord was about to put an end to the Day & time of the wicked.” The Friend’s followers recorded similar visions. For instance, one of them recounted the following dream: I found myself joining the Friend building a sheep fold. After I had finished the enclosure I opened the gate and went out into the wilderness and attempted to gather a flock of sheep into it. . . . But as the Friend would walk into the gate calling the sheep, the goats that were mixed with the sheep, got into or round about the gate and scattered the sheep again into the wilderness. Thus the Friend tried several times, but the goats each time scattered the sheep. Till at length several persons came to the Friend’s aid, and . . . separated the goats from the sheep, and the sheep all went into the fold. And then the invisible arm of Omnipotence spread a covering all over the fold. And then the vials of gods wrath were poured out upon the whole earth and every living thing on the whole earth was destroyed, save the sheep and the persons that were in that fold. The sheep and goats represent the saved and the damned who would stand before Christ on judgment day, while the mention of the “vials of gods wrath” is a direct reference to prophecies contained in the Book of Revelation. Likewise, Susannah Potter’s dreams contained clear references to the Apocalypse. For example, she had a dream on the night of January 3, 1780, featuring a man clothed in black who led a pale horse. Both the man and the horse are drawn from Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”55 Sarah Richards’s dream narratives also contain startling apocalyptic imagery. In the second of a series of dreams in which an angel served as Sarah’s

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vision guide, she “beheld the Universal Friend walking along with . . . a great Company of Friends ranged along as it were in martial order in Twelve Collumns walking two and two.” In front of the Comforter and his disciples, Sarah “beheld a City having walls, and towers great and high Abundance of Earthly grander I beheld therein in the midst of this City I saw a Pallase and Chariots and horses stood before the door.” A messenger rode out from the city and warned the Universal Friends that the “emperor with his attendants” were coming and that they had to flee or be “cut in pieces.” The prophet and his followers refused to move, whereupon: the Emperor and his Attendance come forth of the Pallace gate he taking the foremost Charriot the rest followed some on horses and some in Charriots some run on foot these people appeared some of them to be priests and some Deaons all of these Carried Books Looking like bibles under their right arms, and under their left a dagger which they Endeavoured to Conceal . . . the Emperor biding them destroy that hatefull Shepherd on yonder hill and bring him the best of the flock for he would have a feast that night of the fattest of them Lambs. As the enemy advanced, Sarah heard the Universal Friend order the faithful to “keep their ranks in righteousness.” Next, she saw the prophet lift his eyes “towards heaven and uttered some thing that I could not understand in a Very melodious Voice and the air Seemed to be filled with Hallelujahs then there appeared something proceeding out of the Friends mouth again Like Smoke of a purple Coulour.” The smoke blinded the emperor’s army and stopped their advance. Then the Friend waved his hand and a disciple at the head of each of the twelve columns blew a trumpet, and like Jericho the walls of the city “tumble’d down and the towers falling headlong Crushed vast numbers by their fall and I saw a fire Kindled in the Pallice and it flam’d up to the Clouds and the Chariots wheels droped off and the horses fell dead under their riders and the foot men Stumbled and fell.” The prophet then ordered an advance, and as the Universal Friends marched forward, the ruins of the city and the emperor’s fallen troops turned into dust. When they came on the emperor’s broken chariot, they crushed it with their feet and the emperor “groaned out with a horrid sound.” Sarah looked and saw that his “Crown was fallen from his head and he was wringing and Twisting about.” Finally, she reported that “I discovered one of his feet and knew it to be the devil, at which I rejoiced that his throne and seat was destroyed and himself disenabled.”56 This elaborate dreamscape evokes powerful millennial themes that stood at the center of the Friend’s creed. It features a vision of Armageddon, the

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battle between good and evil in which the Devil and his minions suffer defeat. It also depicts the prophet and his Society as being at the center of this cosmic battle and forming the axis on which the events foretold in the Book of Revelation unfold. Finally, it reflects the Universal Friends’ sense of themselves as a chosen people who faced persecution at the hands of the educated, book-wielding “priests” and “Deacons” of a wicked world. The Friends’ visions also mirror other dimensions of the sect’s religious outlook. A journal that James Hathaway kept while on his travels with the Friend in 1779 and 1780 contains a number of dream narratives that directly relate to the prophet’s creed. On the night of July 12, 1779, he recounted that the Lord Came unto me there Saying Spake unto the People and as I was spaking to the People then there was a field of Corn was Brought into my view and I was Brought near unto it then the word of the Lord came unto me saying pluck up the Corn by the Roots and Cast it from thee in the sight of all the people and I did as the Lord had Commanded me then the word of the Lord came unto me Saying as thee plucked up the Corn and cast it from thee so must the wicked be picked up and cast from me except they Repent. The evil of sin and the need to repent in order to gain salvation—two mainstays of the Comforter’s message—come through loud and clear in this dream. Another “vision of the Night” Hathaway had in December 1779 touched on a different aspect of the Friend’s doctrine: the necessity of relinquishing earthly concerns and embracing spiritual ones in order to receive God’s grace. In the dream, he came to a house that was “very dirty and torn in peeses,” entered into it, and went down through a trap door into a dark cellar. Hathaway then heard a voice which told him that “the kings of the earth was Buried there” and then “revealed unto me that I was to have a Crown but not of this world but . . . of the peesable kingdom which is to be established by Jesus Christ and I came out of that place.” The dilapidated house and the dead “kings of the earth” likely symbolize the impermanence of life and material possessions. The dream’s reference to Hathaway’s “Crown” being not of this world but of Christ’s “peesable kingdom” alludes to the idea that salvation could only be obtained by abandoning earthly desires and embracing a spiritual life.57 The Public Universal Friend’s ministry, which at first glance appears so strange and unusual, drew inspiration from a long history of radical AngloProtestantism and embraced the main currents of religious change in revolutionary America. The late eighteenth century was a time of denominational instability and spiritual innovation that witnessed the startling rise of

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prophets and sectarian groups. The Universal Friend was only one of several figures who claimed to speak for God or even as God, while his followers were among thousands of ordinary folk who found a home in an array of unorthodox religious movements. In addition, the forces of popular religion reshaped American spiritual life as control over faith shifted away from the established clergy and orthodox theology and toward lay folk who favored more accessible, emotionally satisfying, and liberating creeds.58 The central concerns of the Comforter and his followers were spiritual, not social—they were religious seekers rather than reformers or activists. Yet, though their intent was not radical, some of their beliefs had radical implications. The Public Universal Friend’s emphasis on universal salvation and stress on the individual believer’s relationship with the divine highlighted the spiritual competency of all people and served to ease, if not erase, hierarchies of class, race, and sex. Likewise, his advocacy of celibacy laid the groundwork for a challenge to gender norms.59 This was especially apparent to outsiders who commented on the prophet and his followers. To them, the religious concepts behind their behavior were not as important as the seeming threat it presented to the status quo. When the Friend extended his ministry to Pennsylvania in the 1780s, the discussion of the danger the sect posed to social norms exploded into a full-fledged public debate.

Ch a p ter 4

Chronicles Declare his glory among the heathen; his marvellous works among all nations. —Chronicles 1, 16:24

Elizabeth Drinker, the wife of one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Quaker merchants, Henry Drinker, stood at the center of social life in the city, and few notable events took place there that escaped her notice. So, when the Public Universal Friend arrived in Philadelphia in 1782 to proclaim his divine status and holy mission, she made note of the event in her diary. Drinker, who viewed the strange visitor as a bizarre young woman rather than a heaven-sent prophet, had this to say in her entry for October 12: “Some days past Jemima Wilkinson left this Town a woman lately from New-England who has occasioned much talk in this City—she, and those that accompany’d her, (who were call’d her Deciples) resided some short time in Elfriths-Ally, where crouds went to hear her preach and afterwards in the Methodast meeting-house—her Dress and Behavour, remarkable.”1 Here, Drinker documents the opening of the Friend’s Pennsylvania ministry. In the fall of 1782, the Comforter journeyed south to Philadelphia, preached in the city for a couple of weeks, and then returned to Rhode Island. He followed up this short reconnaissance with three much lengthier stays in Pennsylvania between 1784 and 1790. Over the course of these visits, the prophet and several of his New England disciples established a base for their sect at Worcester, a rural community just to the west of Philadelphia, and drew in a number of converts.2 Though the Universal Friend’s appearance and behavior had certainly attracted notice before his arrival in Philadelphia, the prophet’s debut in the 79

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nation’s leading urban center saw him become the focus of a fierce public debate carried out in the city’s newspapers and periodicals as well as more private reflections contained in letters and diaries. Critics accused the Friend and his followers of a range of heinous deeds, including blasphemy and fraud, while those who came to their defense portrayed them as devout, godly people. No matter if it damned or praised them, this commentary has some common features. Rather than focusing on the Universal Friends’ creed, it centered on their appearance, dress, and demeanor. In addition, it habitually juxtaposed these observations against accepted forms of male and female deportment. The discussion of the Friend and his disciples was part of a much broader debate over gender norms in revolutionary-era America carried out in the nation’s rapidly growing print media. The second half of the eighteenth century saw an explosion in the number of newspapers, magazines, and periodicals. There were only 18 weekly and biweekly newspapers in the colonies in 1760, and newspaper publishing was limited to a small number of seaport towns and cities. In contrast, by 1790 America sported 106 newspapers, which were being printed both in coastal urban centers and inland towns. The number of newspapers just kept growing, and by 1820 American printing presses may have turned out as many as 500. Moreover, magazines containing international news, literature, and advice columns appeared in larger urban centers in the late eighteenth century. These publications provided a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and debate among a readership that was not just limited to the elite but included middling craftsmen, mechanics, and farmers. The public sphere in the early national period was no longer “the words of the authoritative few to the people” but a “civic conversation of the people” in which readers and writers discussed all manner of subjects.3 In particular, there was considerable commentary over the social consequences of the Revolution. Some foresaw a path toward a golden age of republican freedom, while others warned of impending chaos and disorder. This discussion went beyond the topic of politics and considered how the Revolution impacted (for good or ill) boundaries of sex, class, and race. In this emerging public discourse, the Friend, and more specifically his appearance, became a magnet for comment and controversy.4 Those who wrote about the prophet focused attention on his countenance, clothing, and comportment because they had traditionally served as markers of status and gender.5 Specifically, commentators already sensitive about the relationship between the Revolution and radical social change dwelled on how the Comforter’s habits of dress and demeanor contravened established social norms. The revolutionary era was a time during which common folk asserted

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themselves at the expense of the elite, women usurped roles traditionally held by men, African Americans attempted to throw off the bonds of slavery, dissenters struggled against religious orthodoxy, and people worried over whether such upheavals would result in anarchy.6 As old hierarchies of rank and privilege lost their potency, those who feared that liberty could easily slide into disorder found new anchors for America’s social order in constructs of race and gender that appeared to be rooted in nature. The Revolution also reinforced old gender hierarchies by promoting a political grammar in which Americans gendered citizenship, independence, and republicanism as male and dependence and monarchy as female. The Comforter and his sect appeared to challenge all of this.7 The story of the Universal Friend’s Pennsylvania ministry intersects with a larger tale of social and gender anxiety in revolutionary America. The prophet’s curious blending of male and female traits confounded the nation’s republican social order. Though such gender bending would have been disturbing in any political system, it was particularly threatening for Americans trying to establish a republic. In theory, a monarchy consisted of politically passive “subjects” and a monarch who exercised ultimate, but benevolent, authority. In this system the integrity and personal qualities of the ruler were critical and those of the populace largely irrelevant. A republic, by contrast, had no king or queen but only a populace of politically active “citizens.” Thus the virtue of the people was a matter of great importance and the beliefs and behaviors of individuals like the Friend and his followers a real source of concern. Moreover, in a society where traditional systems of status based on class and lineage were falling by the wayside and hierarchy increasingly rested on clear distinctions of race and gender, the Universal Friends stood as a profound threat. For Americans who perceived their world in terms of an ongoing struggle between a “masculine,” but fragile, republican order and the seductive, “feminine” power of monarchy, the prophet appeared as a cultural fifth column: a female temptress who shrouded her dark designs in the garb of masculine religious authority.

Pennsylvania Ministry By 1782 the Universal Friend had decided to spread his message beyond New England. In September the prophet and six of his followers—Judge William Potter, his daughter Alice Hazard, his son Arnold, Sarah Brown, Thomas Hathaway, and William Turpin—set off for Philadelphia. They traveled across Connecticut, made their way through New York and New Jersey, and arrived at their destination in October. Considering that many of

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the Comforter’s converts were one-time members of the Society of Friends, it is likely that he went to the city, with its substantial Quaker population, in hopes of bringing in a harvest of new disciples.8 If the Universal Friend arrived in Philadelphia expecting a warm welcome and a legion of converts, then he was disappointed. An article that later appeared in The Freeman’s Journal described the prophet’s introduction

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

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to the city: “In the fall of the year in 1782, it was rumored that a singular female preacher with two other women, and four men as companions, were arrived in this city, in order, as it was said, to publish and declare the glad tidings of salvation, and that the day of the Lord was near to be revealed.” Because the “women’s dresses were singular or uncommon,” the group had trouble finding lodgings but eventually obtained shelter in a widow’s home on Elfrith’s Alley. Word of the strange prophet soon spread “and on the succeeding evening an unruly company assembled” outside the Friend’s lodging, and “a dreadful scene of outrage ensued” when the crowd started to pelt the house with stones and bricks. The author, with a good deal of understatement, observed that this “was contrary to the laws of hospitality.” Just a day or two after the riot, the Friend obtained permission to preach at the Methodist meetinghouse on Fourth Street, “where a large concourse of people attended.” The article described how the holy messenger spoke in “an awful and powerful manner, declaring the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ” and claimed “that numbers were convicted and bow’d down under the power of her ministry.” This was surely an exaggeration and the holy messenger seems to have garnered only a single convert, Jehu Eldridge, during his brief visit to the city. He was a Quaker from Haddonfield, New Jersey, then living in Philadelphia, and in 1783 the Society of Friends disowned him for joining with the prophet. The Friend did attract another ally in the city, though he never joined his sect. Christopher Marshall, a Quaker widower and retired merchant, hosted the prophet, Alice Hazard, and Sarah Brown at his residence on October 6. Four days later the three stayed the night at the home of Marshall’s daughter, Sally, while the men who accompanied the Comforter lodged with his sons, Christopher Jr. and William. These visits formed the foundation of a long correspondence between Wilkinson and Marshall, while the widower’s home and those of his children provided shelter for the Friend and his followers on future visits to the city.9 Once an unremarkable country girl from Rhode Island named Jemima Wilkinson, the Public Universal Friend managed to make quite a stir in America’s largest city. The Marquis de Chastellux, a French aristocrat who was visiting Philadelphia at the time, was one of many who took note of the prophet’s visit. He attempted to see and hear the Friend but found that “the crowd was so great, and, what is very uncommon in America, so turbulent, that it was impossible to get near the place of worship.” The secretary of the French legation to the United States, Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, had better luck. He along with several French officers (French troops were still in America in the wake of the Franco-American victory over the British at Yorktown) found seating near the pulpit. The marquis later recounted that

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Figure 2. Elfrith’s Alley, Philadelphia. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HABS PA, 51-PHILA, 272–2.

“in spite of the commotion which our unforeseen arrival occasioned in the assembly, she [the Friend] did not seem to see us, for she continued to speak with ease and facility, her eyes lowered. . . . She enunciated so clearly, though without elegance, that I think she was reciting a prepared sermon, and it was

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difficult for me to believe that she was speaking from inspiration, or as the worldly say, extemporaneously.”10 These reactions to the Friend capture the combination of curiosity, wonder, and skepticism he elicited during his first visit to the city. Perhaps in an effort to escape the tumult their arrival had generated, the Comforter and his band left Philadelphia on October 19 and made their way to the rural setting of Worcester, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles to the west. They came at the invitation of the Reverend Abraham Supplee, minister of the Bethel Methodist Church. The Friend held two well-attended meetings there and stayed at the home of Reverend Supplee’s brother-in-law, David Wagener. The prophet made quite an impression on Wagener. He described the holy messenger and his half-dozen attendants “as a people that feared God and worked Righteousness, and had the living Gospel of Jesus Christ amongst them, to deliver to the inhabitants of the world.” Of the Friend’s message, he said the following: “When I heard the Gospel’s Trump sound, I knew it was the true sound, and that it was with great power from on high, even to the convincing and converting of souls that heard and obey’d the counsel delivered.” Wagener was so taken with the prophet that he even accompanied him when he traveled north to visit Bethlehem and Easton.11 By mid-October the Friend had finished his reconnaissance and headed back to Rhode Island. Two years later, in August 1784, the Universal Friend returned to Pennsylvania. This time he was accompanied by Arnold Potter and Sarah Brown (both veterans of the prophet’s first sojourn south) as well as Elizabeth Holmes and Abraham Dayton. They arrived in Philadelphia by the middle of the month and took up lodging in the home of Christopher Marshall Jr. On August 15, the Friend held a service at the Free Quaker meetinghouse that drew three to four hundred people. Philadelphia merchant Jacob Hiltzeimer made note of the event in his diary, writing: “I observed people crowded about the Free Quakers’ meeting-house, and was told that they were waiting to see the wonderful Jemima Wilkinson.” The Universal Friend held additional meetings at the same location on August 17 and 20 that drew even larger crowds.12 Philadelphia’s Free Quakers were Friends who had been dismissed by their Society for accepting the authority of and paying taxes to Pennsylvania’s revolutionary government. Both of these acts had been forbidden by the Philadelphia meeting, which construed them as compromising the Quakers’ commitment to strict neutrality. In 1781 a number of such Pennsylvania Friends, including Samuel Wetherill (the group’s founder) and Betsy Ross, established their own sect. Christopher Marshall Sr. was a prominent member of this group, and it is very likely that he obtained

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permission for the Friend to speak at their meeting house. Marshall was also instrumental in the 1784 publication of the pamphlet, The Universal Friend’s Advice to Those of the Same Religious Society, Recommended to Be Read in Their Public Meetings for Divine Worship, which outlined the basic principles and practices of the Society of Universal Friends. It is unclear why the prophet had it published in Philadelphia rather than Rhode Island, but it is likely that he wanted to take advantage of the city’s extensive publishing facilities and more concentrated audience.13 After spending a couple of weeks in Philadelphia, the Friend and his entourage made the short trip to Worcester, arriving there on August 28. It was here that the Comforter made the most headway in attracting followers

Figure 3. The Free Quaker meetinghouse, Philadelphia. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HABS PA, 51-PHILA, 158–11.

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during his previous visit, and he quickly set about reestablishing ties with the Supplees and Wageners. David Wagener had, upon hearing of the Friend’s return, gone to Philadelphia, attended one of his meetings at the Free Quaker meetinghouse, and left with what he described as “renewed satisfaction” with the prophet and his message. When the Friend arrived in Worcester, he held several meetings at which Wagener attested he heard “the truth and whole counsel of the Lord declared.” It appears that at this point David Wagener, his wife Anna, and several others formally joined the Society of Universal Friends. After spending some time in Worcester, the prophet left for a short preaching tour in New Jersey. He returned to Philadelphia in early October, spent a week there, and then started back to New England on October 14.14 Before leaving Pennsylvania, the Friend laid the groundwork for a more permanent presence in the state. David Wagener’s home became the headquarters of the prophet’s Pennsylvania ministry and sheltered a series of emissaries he sent south to look after his interests there. In September 1784, Thomas Hathaway took passage aboard a ship from Massachusetts, arrived in Philadelphia, and then made his way to Worcester. He stayed through the fall and winter and helped to establish a meeting of the Society of Universal Friends there before returning home. Another of the Friend’s chief disciples, James Parker, followed Hathaway in the fall of 1785 and embarked on a preaching tour of Philadelphia and its environs. It seems, however, that he did not meet with much success, and for reasons that remain unclear, even Philadelphia’s Free Quakers denied him permission to speak at their meetinghouse. The Friend replaced Parker with his devoted second-in-command, Sarah Richards, in the winter of 1786. She arrived at the home of David Wagener on December 30 and remained in Pennsylvania for the next three years. Ultimately it was Richards who did the most to extend the Friend’s Society beyond New England.15 Though Sarah Richards arrived in Worcester with high hopes, she soon ran into difficulties. The Universal Friend received several letters from her in 1787 that painted a pretty bleak picture of her situation. Richards wrote that she and the prophet’s other followers in Pennsylvania were “sick for want of seeing the Friend” and listed a number of troubles that she had encountered. These included disputes between sect members and the fact that the father of one of the prophet’s neophytes, Mary Bramall, was pressuring her to renounce the Comforter and return to her home in Philadelphia. In another discouraging development, Elizabeth Beyerley, who Richards described as the “most abandoned Creature as ever I saw,” defected from the Society. As if to remove any doubts the prophet might have had about making another visit to

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Pennsylvania, Richards stated, “I do not see any danger that may arise to the Friend outwardly here as to the smallpox” (Christopher Marshall mentions in his diary that Richards had come down with the disease in January 1787). She also informed her leader that she had instructed her fellow disciples “to clean all things in the house” and taken measures to “seclude all danger,” including having the Friend’s Pennsylvania converts inoculated against the disease. The Comforter sent a letter to Richards in response to her reports in which he wrote: “I have Been verry much troubled about thee for fear of Treacherous Dealers under the pretence of being friends to thee, I have been to Philedelphia more then once, and am some acquainted with people there. With their ways & their Doings—And due know if it ware possible they would Deceive the verry Elect.” So much for the City of Brotherly Love!16 The challenges Sarah Richards faced were not just a product of troubles among the Friend’s followers, for she and her compatriots found themselves under siege as public opinion turned against the sect. There had been opposition to the Friend from the time of his first visit to Pennsylvania in 1782; however, in 1787 the prophet’s adversaries launched a vigorous campaign against him in Philadelphia’s newspapers and periodicals. The Freeman’s Journal, the American Museum, and the Pennsylvania Gazette printed letters that lambasted the Universal Friend and his disciples, accusing them of everything from blasphemy to mental illness, fraud to attempted murder. In March, just as this media assault was gaining momentum, the prophet sent a letter to Richards that directly addressed the attacks. He advised Sarah to be patient and stated, “Let Righteousness be the girdle of your Loyns . . . the wicked will find some other Business to due before it is long Besides publishing me and them that Desire to due well in News Papers, Don’t be troubled Dear Souls But Clear your garments as you go through.” The Friend closed by promising Sarah that their enemies would, in the end, get what they deserved: “But the fearfull and unbelieving & abominable & Dogs & sorcerers and Whore Mungers and all Lyers shall have their part in the Lake that Burnes with fire & Brimstone.”17 After an absence of nearly two years, the Universal Friend made a third, year-long visit to Pennsylvania. The prophet set out from Little Rest on November 17, 1787, along with several attendants, including Benedict Robinson, who kept a journal during the trip. In it he mentions that the Friend paused from his journey to preach on the steps of New Haven’s courthouse on November 25, where he drew a “great audience of people” of whom the “greater part was a wild and unstable company.” After passing through Connecticut, the party went to New York City where they crossed the Hudson and then made their way to Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The

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town’s Methodists invited the prophet to preach, and he accepted. With obvious disdain, Robinson wrote that few who attended paid attention to the Friend’s words, and the audience “was like the troubled sea that would not rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” The holy messenger and his entourage traveled through New Jersey and crossed the Delaware at Howel’s Ferry. Here Robinson parted company with the Friend and made his way back to Rhode Island. Instead of stopping in Philadelphia, the prophet and his remaining companions made straight for the Society’s base at Worcester, arriving there on December 1. Considering the rough handling the Comforter had received in the city’s newspapers, it is no wonder they steered clear of it.18 Once at Worcester, the Universal Friend set about consolidating his gains in Pennsylvania, and there is no evidence that he embarked on extensive preaching tours or attempted to draw in new converts. Only in May 1788 did the prophet briefly leave Worcester and hold several meetings in Philadelphia. By this time, scandalous newspaper accounts concerning the Universal Friends had so inflamed the city’s inhabitants that hostile crowds gathered wherever the prophet lodged or preached. Perhaps in an attempt to avoid these mobs, the Comforter began holding meetings outside of the city. For instance, on May 22 Jacob Hiltzeimer recorded that he rode out of Philadelphia to “Cunningham’s Centre House to hear the famous Jemima Wilkinson preach, and in the room where formerly a billard table stood I saw and heard her.” The Friend spent the rest of the summer and early fall in Pennsylvania and finally returned to New England in November.19 The Universal Friend kept an even lower profile on his fourth and final visit to Pennsylvania. In 1782 he had arrived in Philadelphia like a triumphant Old Testament prophet brimming with confidence. Seven years later the holy messenger returned to the city like a thief in the night and quietly made his way to Worcester. There was no newspaper coverage of the Friend’s final visit, and he seems to have made no public appearances; indeed, the only evidence that exists of the prophet’s year-long stay is contained in the private correspondence and diaries of his disciples. Even Christopher Marshall, the Friend’s most prominent ally in Philadelphia, seems to have had little contact with the Comforter. His only reference to the Friend appears in a diary entry dated February 6, 1789, which simply states, “Found Jemima returned from the Eastward last night.”20 The prophet did not come to Pennsylvania to preach; instead, he made the trip to wind up his affairs in the state and to encourage his Pennsylvania converts to join him on the next phase of his ministry: the establishment of a religious community on the frontier far from the critics and scoffers of Philadelphia.

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Seeing and Hearing Those who commented on the Public Universal Friend were more interested in the messenger than his message. For example, a Philadelphian using the pseudonym “Lang Syne” wrote a recollection of a boyhood encounter with the prophet in which he observed, “What she said, or of the subject matter, nothing is remembered; but her person, dress and manner is as palpable ‘to the mind’s eye,’ as though she thus looked and spake but yesterday.” The costume, countenance, and demeanor of the Friend and, to a lesser degree, his followers were the focus of considerable description and debate. There was an almost equal fascination with how the prophet sounded—with the tone of his voice and the style of his preaching. The way the holy messenger looked and spoke all pointed to a curious blending of male and female traits that spelled trouble for those anxious about the social consequences of the Revolution.21 The clothing worn by the prophet and his disciples received the most attention. Soon after his miraculous arrival in 1776, the Universal Friend constructed a sartorial style that he stuck with throughout his ministry. Someone who knew the prophet during the opening stages of his mission described his dress as a “a broad brimmed white beaver hat with a low crown . . . [and] a full light drab cloak, or mantle, with a unique underdress and cravat round the neck, with square ends that fell down to her waist forward.” Another person familiar with the Friend in the first years of his ministry recalled him as wearing “a broad brimmed beaver hat of light brown color. . . . [and] a long black satin robe sweeping to the ground, the fashion entirely her own, with white bands on the necktie such as Episcopal clergymen wear.” This author goes on to clarify what the first observer meant by the Comforter’s “unique underdress,” explaining that under his robe the prophet wore a “rich silk skirt . . . with a long waistcoat loosely fitted” that “much resembled the vests worn by men in old continental times.”22 The Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, who saw the Friend preach in Philadelphia’s in 1782, simply observed that he wore “a large gray felt hat with turned up edges. . . . [and] a kind of cloth smock tied under the chin like a dressing gown.” In 1794, after the prophet took up residence in New York, the Quaker William Savery attested that he wore “a loose gown or rather a surplice of calico.” Just six years before the Friend’s death, a traveler described his dress as consisting of “a kind of minister’s gown or cassock of dark coloured jean.”23 Though the style of the holy messenger’s clothes remained consistent, the colors he wore did vary. Writing in 1787, Ezra Stiles saw the Friend wearing a “Purple Gown, long sleeves to the Wristbands” with a “purple handkerchief or Neckcloth.” Jacob

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Hiltzeimer, who recorded encounters with the prophet in 1784 and 1788, described seeing him on one occasion wearing a “white linen garment” and, on another, a “black gown.” The Friend also wore the same broad-brimmed, low-crown hat in various colors. In addition to white, light brown, and gray, a Philadelphian recalled seeing the Comforter “surmounted by a shining black beaver hat with a broad brim, and low flattened crown.” A few of the Friend’s leading female followers imitated his prophetic garb. An article appearing in The Freeman’s Journal had this to say about Sarah Richards: “[She] would be a comely person were she to dress as becomes her sex, but as she imitates the person they call the friend, in her external appearance . . . she is by that means rather disfigured.”24 People spent so much time describing the Friend’s clothing because they considered dress a clear indicator of where one fit into hierarchies of class, gender, and age. The cut, color, and quality of a person’s garb; the hat they donned; or the type of wig they wore sent important messages about

Figure 4. A hat worn by the Universal Friend. Photograph by author. Wilkinson Collection, Courtesy of the Yates County History Center, Penn Yan, NY.

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a person’s status, rank, occupation, and religious affiliation. In the midst of the American Revolution, dress also took on a number of explicit political meanings. During the nonimportation campaigns of the 1760s and 1770s, for example, wearing homespun rather than fabric imported from Britain marked someone as a true American patriot. Likewise, American soldiers who chose to clothe themselves in rustic hunting shirts rather than smartlooking uniforms that followed European fashions did so as an expression of their revolutionary ardor and, some feared, leveling principles.25 Writers thus poured over the details of the Friend’s dress searching for clues that would shed light on his identity, character, and beliefs. More specifically, they looked for evidence concerning whether or not the prophet and his sect represented a threat to social norms. Observers analyzed the Universal Friend’s clothing as a way of understanding the prophet’s gender identity—whether the holy messenger was male, female, or some mix of the two. The Reverend Ezra Stiles opened one of his commentaries by flatly stating that the Comforter “dressed like a Man.” In another, he noted that he wore a cape “like a Man’s,” a “Mans shirt,” and a handkerchief around her neck “like a man’s.” In a similar fashion, William Savery characterized the Friend’s clothing as being “quite masculine.” One writer also recounted a conversation with the prophet in which he directly asserted the inherent maleness of the Friend’s dress: “I then remarked to her, on the impropriety of her dress and appearance, and told her it was so much like the dress and appearance of a man, that I conceived it to be very improper.”26 Commentators also divined what they perceived as the Friend’s embrace of a masculine identity by what he did not wear. Lang Syne’s recollection of the prophet contained a description of his clothing, or what he referred to as the holy messenger’s “strange habit,” noting that it lacked “female ornament of any kind.” An anonymous letter to The Freeman’s Journal mentioned that the prophet wore a hat, but “no cap.” Similarly, Jacob Hiltzeimer stated that the Friend wore “a white hat, but no cap.” What is implicit in the last two passages is that the Comforter did not cover his head with a cap as society expected women to do both indoors and out. Instead, he wore a man’s hat and removed it indoors just like a man. Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois establishes this final point in his account of a sermon the Friend gave in Philadelphia, in which he specifically notes that the prophet removed his “large gray felt hat” when he preached.27 Still others asserted that the Friend’s dress conveyed, not simply a masculine identity, but a more complex blending of the masculine and feminine. A writer in The Freeman’s Journal, for instance, described the Comforter’s robe

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as resembling “a morning gown, such as both men and women commonly wear” and noted that the clothing he wore under it conveyed “the same idea as her external appearance of her being neither man nor woman.”28 Building on its gender symbolism, the dress of the Friend and his followers conveyed additional messages. It was obvious to most that the prophet’s garb mimicked that of ministers in an attempt to appropriate clerical authority. One commentator mentioned that the holy messenger wore a white cravat “such as Episcopal clergymen wear,” while another characterized his loose robes as being like “a kind of minister’s gown or cassock.” Jacob Hiltzeimer was explicit in making this association: he simply stated that the prophet dressed “after the fashion of church ministers.”29 There was also a Quaker context to the Universal Friends’ choice of clothing. The low-crowned, broad-brim hat the Comforter invariably wore was the style favored by Quaker men. A more striking example of Quaker influence appears in a description of Sara Richards printed in The Freeman’s Journal. After explaining that she generally imitated the Universal Friend’s dress, the article noted that Richards was “now clothed in what they call sackcloth . . . in which she is to fulfil the days of her prophecy.” This act harkens back to the radicalism of the early Quaker movement when Friends on both sides of the Atlantic challenged the status quo by walking through the streets or entering meetinghouses decked out in sackcloth and ashes.30 The Public Universal Friend’s physical features—his hair, eyes, and complexion—received as much attention as his costume. Ezra Stiles described the prophet as “strait, well made, [with a] light Complexion, black Eyes, round face, [and] chesnut dark Hair.” A resident of Rhode Island who knew Jemima Wilkinson as a young woman said that “she was higher than a middle stature, [with a] fine form, fair complexion, with florid cheeks, dark and brilliant eyes, and beautiful white teeth” and described her hair as “dark auburn, or black” which “fell on her shoulders in three full ringlets.” Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois’s account of his encounter with the Friend paints a similar picture. He states that the Comforter parted “her hair on top of her head, and lets it fall onto her shoulders” and had “beautiful features, a fine mouth, and animated eyes.” Twelve years later, Thomas Morris provided a description of the Friend that is largely consistent with these earlier accounts. He wrote that “she was a fine looking woman, of a good height; and though not corpulent, inclined to en bon point [plumpness]. Her hair was jet black, short, and curled on her shoulders; she had fine eyes and good teeth, and complexion.”31 Those who chronicled their sightings of the Universal Friend invariably stressed her beauty, for writers from outside of the Society portrayed the

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prophet as a woman no matter how masculine her dress or demeanor. It appears that 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. A letter that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal in 1787 had this to say about the Comforter: “Her complexion good, her eye black and remarkably brilliant, her hair black, and waving in beautiful ringlets upon her neck and shoulders, her features regular and the whole of her face thought by many to be perfectly beautiful.” Lang Syne’s recollections also dwell on the topic of the prophet’s physical beauty, observing that “her glossy black hair was parted evenly on her pale round forehead, and smoothed back beyond the ears, from whence it fell in profusion about her neck and shoulders, seemingly without art of contrivance—arched black eyebrows and fierce looking black eyes . . . beautiful aqueline nose, handsome mouth and chin, all supported by a neck comfortable to the line of beauty and proportion.” Likewise, the Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, though he found the Friend’s sermon dull, was certainly taken with the heavenly messenger’s appearance, stating “this soul sent from heaven has chosen a rather beautiful body for its dwelling, and many living ladies would not be unwilling to inhabit that outer shell.” Indeed, the marquis was more put off by the fact that the loose robes the prophet wore fell “to the feet, without outlining her figure” than by anything the Comforter said.32 No matter what the Friend did to assert a masculine persona, observers (or, more precisely, male observers) continued to be fascinated with the prophet as a woman. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it is important to keep in mind that these assertions concerning the Comforter should not be taken at face value. Though several commentators wrote of the Friend’s attractiveness with a consistency that gives their observations credence, it is also true that those who were most intimate with the prophet had little to say about his appearance and never broached the topic of his beauty. This is probably because, even if their spiritual guide was attractive according to the conventions of the time, his followers would have considered it of little importance. As for the outsiders who dwelled on the Friend’s alleged good looks, such observations may not have been idle talk but commentary that served an ulterior motive. Namely, their emphasis on the prophet’s attractiveness as a woman implicitly denied claims that he was a gender-intermediate messenger of God. Though commentators consistently wrote about the Universal Friend’s appearance in terms of feminine beauty, they did recognize that the prophet attempted to convey a masculine persona. As Lang Syne put it, “She appeared beautifully erect, and tall for a woman, although at the same time

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the masculine appearance predominated.” Much of this discussion revolved around the Friend’s hair. In the eighteenth century, women wore their hair close to the head and covered with a cap. The only exception to this was upper-class women who, at times, wore their hair uncovered and piled high on their heads.33 Contemporaries clearly recognized that, by wearing his hair loose on his shoulders and going bare-headed indoors, the Comforter imitated male prerogative and fashion. In May 1788, Jacob Hiltzeimer wrote that the Friend’s “hair was dressed like that of a man.” Likewise, in a discussion of Sarah Richards that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal, a writer noted that she imitated the dress and appearance of the Friend, including her practice of “wearing her hair down like a man.” It is also clear that the prophet’s hair style was in no way an attempt to emulate upper-class women. Lang Syne observed that the “profusion of nature’s ringlets . . . floating elegantly” around the Friend’s neck and shoulders was “all the more remarkable, since the fashion of the day for ladies’ head-dress consisted of frizzled hair, long wire pins, powder and pomatum.”34 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. The Universal Friend’s manner of speaking also came under intense scrutiny. It was not so much what was said, but how he said it, that drew attention. There is no clear consensus on what the prophet’s voice sounded like. One person described it as “clear and harmonious,” while Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois noted that he conversed “with ease and facility” and “enunciated so clearly, though without elegance.” Others were not so impressed. Jacob Hiltzeimer simply stated that the Comforter “spoke much in the New England dialect.” A letter published in The Freeman’s Journal echoed this point but in less charitable terms, stating that the Friend’s “pronunciation is the peculiar dialect of the most illiterate of the country people of New England.” Lang Syne’s reminiscence provides the most striking assessment of the prophet’s tone, characterizing it as a “kind of croak, unearthly and sepulchral.” This description leaves the impression that while his voice may not have been pleasant to the ear, it certainly made a powerful impression on those who heard it.35 In addition to describing what the Friend sounded like, commentators considered his rhetorical practices. A witness to the holy messenger’s early ministry testified that “she would rise up and stand perfectly still for a minute

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or more, then proceed with a slow and distinct enunciation. She spoke with great ease, and with increased fluency” in a manner that was “persuasive and emphatic.” In a similar vein, The Freeman’s Journal described the prophet “standing at times for several hours, sometimes cold and languid, but at other times . . . lively, and discovers that kind of zeal and animation which gives reason to suppose she may really apprehend herself to be a person that is devine.” Lang Syne corroborates these characterizations; he wrote that “she spoke deliberately, not ‘startingly and rash,’ but resting with one hand on the banister before her, and using but occasional action with the other, nevertheless she seemed as one moved by that ‘prophetic fury’ which ‘sewed the web,’ while she stood uttering words of wondrous import.”36 Whether or not the Friend’s sermonic style was effective was a matter of personal taste. Some found the prophet’s oratory to be impressive and affecting. Christopher Marshall considered his sermons “grave, manly, and reverent, recommending with a degree of power a state of repentance.” Even after Abner Brownell turned against him, he described the Friend as “very eloquent” and of exhorting “with great Confidence and Boldness.” A Mr. Remer also fondly remembered the Comforter as “emphatically a proverbial preacher” who “spoke in proverbs”; perhaps he liked his style because it was consistent with the way he assumed a true prophet would speak.37 Others found the holy messenger’s discourse more insipid than inspiring. Ezra Stiles wrote that the prophet’s sermons consisted of “many Texts repeated without Connexion.” In 1794 Thomas Morris described the Friend’s preaching in similar terms, stating, “The sermon I heard her preach, was bad in point of language, and almost unintelligible.” Nearly fifteen years later, a traveler who visited the prophet came to the same conclusion. He characterized the Friend’s manner of speaking as “unpleasantly parenetic and didactic, abounding with scripture phraseology applied somewhat at random, and strongly savouring of what seemed to be affected mysticism.”38 In the final calculation, it seems that those who attended one of the Universal Friend’s sermons expecting to hear a well-reasoned theological discourse left disappointed, while those who went hoping to witness the heavenly inspired, mystical pronouncements of a prophet had their expectations satisfied. The religious background of those who listened to the prophet shaped their response to him as well, for the Friend’s preaching style was rooted in a distinct set of religious traditions. Those steeped in the evangelical ethos of the Great Awakening would have been more comfortable with the Comforter’s homespun language and plain-spoken sermons. Evangelicals saw preaching, not as a venue for finely woven intellectual arguments, but as a form of expression in which spontaneity and emotional fervor was essential.

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The method of speaking employed by exhorters in the Society of Friends was also foundational to the Friend’s preaching, and those who came out of this tradition recognized his mode of delivery as quintessentially Quaker. The practice of starting a discourse in a low, slow tone of voice and then picking up speed and volume as it unfolded was an established technique of Quaker preaching as was rejecting scripts or notes in favor of unrehearsed, inspirational, and as a result, disjointed sermons. The Reverend Stiles was among those who recognized this influence, stating that the prophet “discoursed in the grave, tonic & unconnected Manner of the Friends or Quakers.”39 Whether they found his preaching effective or offensive, awe-inspiring or underwhelming, observers agreed that the prophet’s speech was masculine. Christopher Marshall characterized the Friend’s sermons as “manly,” while a letter that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal in February 1787 stated that “her voice is masculine.” Another reminiscence was a bit more ambiguous, observing that the Comforter had a “masculine-feminine tone of voice.”40 These testimonies do not dwell on why they perceived the Friend’s voice and delivery as manly, but there are some clues. It seems that the very tone the prophet employed in preaching carried masculine connotations: it was by many accounts low and deep. An anonymous letter that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal described the heavenly messenger’s voice as possessing a “grum, masculine, authoritative tone.” Likewise, the very fact that the Friend spoke in public before large groups and did so with ease, confidence, and authority contributed to the impression that the prophet’s speech was masculine. Only men were supposed to be comfortable with public speaking; in contrast, society perceived modesty, shyness, and an unwillingness (or inability) to speak before an audience as essentially feminine traits. The Friend’s challenge to these gendered speech categories made him appear morally suspect and threatening. As one detractor put it, the way the Comforter spoke “was not in such a way as became a meek and good woman.”41 The Universal Friend’s dress, speech, and countenance conveyed a masculine or gender-ambiguous persona that many observers found disturbing and dangerous. One characterization of the prophet stressed his “rather masculine stamp of face,” while another asserted that he was “masculine by articulation and appearance.” Jacob Hiltzeimer put it most bluntly when he stated that the Friend looked “more like a man than a woman.”42 From time to time, observers also applied this assessment to the prophet’s followers. They chided female disciples for contravening their identity as women by imitating the Friend’s manner of dress and hairstyle, and at least one writer hinted at what he saw as a dangerous lack of masculinity among the prophet’s male followers. The Marquis de Chastellux encountered some of the Friend’s

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male travelling companions (likely Arnold Potter and William Turpin) in Philadelphia in 1782. He had this to say about their appearance: “They were tall, handsome young men, the youngest not above nineteen, with large round flapped hats, and long flowing strait locks, with a sort of melancholy wildness in their countenances, and an effeminate, dejected air.” Chastellux characterized the young men in ways that feminized them.43 He most obviously did so by calling the pair “effeminate;” however, several other descriptors he used to characterize the two young men—namely their “melancholy wildness” and “dejected air”—also had feminine associations. On the one hand, “wildness” evoked a combination of nature and passion—two concepts tightly bound to concepts of womanhood—while, on the other, “melancholy” and “dejected” allude to a lack of manly strength and resoluteness. The Public Universal Friend’s self-presentation was one way he forged a new identity as a genderless spirit of God and proclaimed it to the World. In an age in which people expected a person’s dress and countenance to communicate messages about who they were, the way the prophet presented himself was an important aspect of his ministry. In addition, Jemima Wilkinson’s Quaker background informed the masculine overtones of his dress and speech. Going back to the very origins of the denomination and its dynamic cofounder, Margaret Fell, female Quaker prophets had traditionally taken on masculine traits in terms of their speech and body language. Placed in this context, the Universal Friend’s public persona, which at first blush appears idiosyncratic, was an extension of Quaker culture.44

Behavior and Character Besides focusing on the outward appearance of the Universal Friend and his adherents, commentators scrutinized their behavior and speculated on their motives. These observations were an attempt to come to grips with a more ephemeral aspect of the prophet and his disciples, their character. As with descriptions of the Comforter’s dress and countenance, this discussion was steeped in gendered language and assumptions. The most strident commentary on the Universal Friends’ character and morals appeared in a series of letters that ran in Philadelphia periodicals in 1787. Together they formed a lively and, at times, vicious debate. On one side were those who disparaged the motives of the Friend and his followers and saw them as a profound threat to society; on the other were writers who portrayed them as genuinely devout or, at the very worst, misguided but harmless religious seekers. That the Friend’s creed did not receive much attention is in itself revealing. This might seem surprising for a debate that centered on a new religious

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sect; however, the prophet’s message was unoriginal and conventional and, therefore, did not draw much attention. In addition, most of those who wrote about the Society did not have much knowledge of their religious doctrine or practices. Many based their assessment of the Friend on the attendance of a single sermon, brief personal encounters, or secondhand information that did not provide what observers needed to probe deeply into his gospel. They did not seem troubled by these limits. To them, seeing was believing, and they proceeded on the principle that even cursory inspection of appearance and behavior could shed light on a person’s beliefs. Nevertheless, a few writers did reflect on the sect’s doctrines and, in keeping with other aspects of the debate surrounding the Universal Friends, focused on their gendered implications. An anonymous letter that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal in March 1787 recounted that a “gentlewoman of unquestionable reputation” had “explained the whole secret of her [the Friend’s] profane and impious supposed incarnation.” In particular, she explained how the prophet believed that, upon her death in 1776, Jemima Wilkinson’s soul “was admitted into heaven accordingly, after which the divine spirit, or son of God . . . reanimated the body which the soul . . . had left.” It is not clear what disturbed the author more, the fact that the Friend was posing as a Messiah or that a woman was usurping the identity of a man. The letter’s criticism of the Society of Universal Friends revolves around how it contravened a gendered status quo in which men ruled over women and women did not usurp the authority of men. “What better can be expected,” it concluded, “where a number of people make it a point implicitly to observe the directions of a woman not in her senses.”45 The Marquis de Chastellux also drew attention to the Society’s impact on established gender norms. He observed that the Universal Friend’s followers were “impressed with the belief that she is in her person the savior of the world revived, and travels from place to place, attended by twelve young men, who she calls her apostles.” Though this claim is highly inaccurate, it reveals much about public perceptions of the sect. The fact that, in the Frenchman’s eyes, the prophet was a woman made the notion that she was Christ doubly offensive. It was not only Wilkinson’s infringement on male identity and authority that disturbed him, but that the men who followed her abetted this dangerous absurdity. Thus, to Chastellux, the Friend’s sect not only produced masculine women but also emasculated men. Indeed, he said as much when he wrote that the men who believed in the prophet “have literally followed the precept of ‘making eunuchs of themselves for Christ’s sake.’ ”46 Contemporary accounts portray a sect in which the shuffling of gender identities was not just limited to its leader but had spread to its rank and file.

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In particular, some advanced the claim that women took on, at least figuratively, the identity and authority of men. Another belief allegedly held by the Universal Friends that drew attention was that the spirits of Old Testament prophets had entered the bodies of several of the Friend’s leading adherents. William Savery most forcefully made this point, stating that “it was believed by her [the Comforter’s] credulous disciples, that the prophet Elijah had taken possession of the body of one James Parker and spoke through his organs; and that the prophet Daniel, in a like manner, inhabited the body of Sarah Richards.” A letter appearing in a Philadelphia newspaper also said that David Wagener believed that the soul of King David had entered his body at the invitation of the Friend and that his followers believed the spirit of the biblical Enoch resided within Rachel Malin. As if such blasphemous pretensions were not bad enough, the fact that women became vessels for the spirits of biblical holy men made this belief even more offensive.47 Observers, however, focused on behavior, not belief, when drawing conclusions about the character of the prophet and his disciples. Once again, their words reflect a concern with how the Society’s practices erased the distinctions between men and women. Writers focused on how followers addressed the prophet, noting that they never used the name she was born with or female pronouns—to the Society, the Friend was very much as “he.” The private correspondence and public pronouncements of the Universal Friends bears this out. The prophet’s plagiarized publication, Some Considerations, Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects of Professors of This Age, identified its author as “your friend and brother in the communion and fellowship of the gospel.” In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell confirms that one of the “singular marks of respect” paid by members of the sect to the Friend was referring to their leader as “him.” A letter Sarah Richards wrote to the Comforter in 1787 includes the following passage: “I will be with thee and hope to be remembered by that Friend that sticketh closer and I love more than A Brother!” Finally, in 1799, one of the prophet’s followers, Elizabeth Carr, reportedly said of the holy messenger that “it would not due to have a hard thought of him for the dear lamb has a right to due as he pleases.”48 To critics, the fact that the Universal Friends accepted Jemima Wilkinson’s claim that she was not a woman encapsulated the threat the group posed to the gender status quo. To those who voiced concerns about the Society, the manner in which the Universal Friends addressed their spiritual guide was just one among many practices that challenged gender conventions. That the prophet promoted celibacy also caught the attention of detractors. To them, the idea that women would live outside the institution of marriage (as well as beyond the

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structures of male authority it advanced) and turn their backs on the traditional female duty of childbearing was an invitation to chaos. An attack that appeared against the sect in a Philadelphia newspaper in March 1787 featured what it saw as the very real and dangerous consequences of this act of devotion. Its author complained of the “mischiefs” that the Society of Universal Friends had perpetrated and accused them of having “separated men from their wives, and wives from their husbands.” In doing so, they disrupted patriarchal family life and sowed “confusion wherever they have been.”49 Another set of behaviors portrayed as dangerously deviant were the devotional acts of the Friend’s disciples. For example, a letter that appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper featured the prophet’s leading Pennsylvania convert, David Wagener. It recounted, having it “from good authority, that this Waggoner, at a particular time, threw himself at the feet of Jemimah, in the utmost prostration, and confessed his sins to her.” Wagener’s actions disturbed the author on several levels. First, it constituted a religious offense: people should only confess their sins to God or Jesus, not to prophetic imposters. Second, Wagener’s act, which the letter described as a “humiliation,” symbolized the threat to the social order posed by the Universal Friends, for here was a man subordinating himself to a woman. Abner Brownell struck on this same theme in Enthusiastical Errors when he recalled how one convert expressed his devotion to the Comforter: After she [the Friend] had been exhorting and praying with a number who came to make her a visit, this man began to pretend to be greatly affected and overcome, and to praise the Lord as he call’d it, telling that his soul was redeemed, and crying out in most dreadful loud acclamations with a singing tone, ‘Glory to God,’ and repeating of it over and over; and when he began to cry out he began to tremble, and then down upon his knees before her and cry’d to the rest to believe on the Son of God. Society coded the behaviors that Brownell ascribed to this man—namely, his lack of physical and emotional control—as essentially feminine. Whereas revolutionary-era Americans held that men were rational, disciplined, and capable of exercising self-control, they perceived women as more emotional and unstable. Brownell depicts this man as fitting into the latter category and raises the specter of a religious movement whose practices challenged essential distinctions between men and women.50 Abner Brownell documented other aspects of the Friends’ behavior that he saw as inverting proper gender roles. He noted that members of the Society looked to the prophet not only for spiritual insight but also for advice

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on how to run their day-to-day lives. As he put it: “[Women] will go ask her about the method of their cooking; and not only so, but when they can have an opportunity they will ask her how they shall have their cloaths made, and about making their cloth; and some men are so silly that they will ask her about all their secular affairs, even their farming business, and such small things that one would think a rational man would blush at.” Brownell was clearly offended by this state of affairs. It was common and acceptable for one woman to go to another for advice; however, it was quite another thing for men to seek the counsel of a woman, even one claiming to be a heavensent prophet, concerning activities that lay in the male sphere. This is why he characterized the men’s behavior as “silly”—a word that invokes an image of girlish foolishness—and beneath the dignity of a “rational man.”51 Brownell touched on another gendered critique often brought up by those who disparaged the Universal Friend: that he lived off the labor and property of his followers. Brownell asserted that the prophet’s adherents have abundance of respect to show and to treat her with, in entertainment and refreshment of both victuals & drink, of which she is willing to receive from them. . . . and it must be of the best that the house affords; and she will tell them that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof ”; and so they think she has a sovereign right to use and dispose of all things as she sees fit; And many times when people make her presents (and no person can rationally think she gets much to eat or wear except what is given to her, as she does nothing of consequence of servile labour to procure it; but when they give her any thing) she will tell them if the heart is with the gift or offering, she can accept it, &c. and so they religiously contribute to her.52 On one level, this passage simply reinforces the claim that Jemima Wilkinson was simply a con artist who claimed prophetic powers in order to reap worldly rewards. On another, it contributes to the picture of a sect dangerously out of sync with the status quo. The Friend and his followers lived in a time where men, not women, were to own and reap the material benefits of property. Seen in this light, the Friend’s alleged dominion over the wealth and property of men was a direct challenge to the economic foundations of male dominance. In addition to dissecting their behavior, most commentators eventually got around to considering the motives of the prophet and his disciples. The majority portrayed them in a negative light. To these writers there were only two possible answers to the question of why the sect existed. One was that the Friend and his followers were suffering from some sort of collective

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delusion. The other was that the sect’s leader and inner-circle were charlatans who sought to ensnare and swindle the gullible. A number of observers promoted the first interpretation. In 1781 the Revered Ezra Stiles discussed Jemima Wilkinson in his journal and simply concluded that “her disorder is temporary Insanity or Lunacy, or Dementia quoad hoc.” Several years later, a letter printed in The Freeman’s Journal came to the same conclusion, asserting that Wilkinson was nothing but “a woman not in her senses” and her disciples victims of an “amazing and diabolical delusion.”53 Most perceived the Friend’s ministry in far more sinister terms. In their view the prophet and his chief disciples were fakes who, taking advantage of the social and religious instability of the Revolution, aimed to enrich themselves at the expense of others. In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell detailed what he claimed was evidence of the prophet’s duplicity. He explained that the Friend beguiled the unwary with “pretended disearnation and omniscence of things.” In other words, he claimed to be able to read people’s thoughts and even foretell the future. Brownell asserted that there was more deviousness than divinity behind these supposed powers. He recounted how one day he “saw a couple of the Friends associates contending together in a lower room, but they did not know that I or any body saw them.” Brownell then went to the prophet to report what he witnessed. Next, one of the individuals who had been arguing came to the Comforter, upon which the prophet promptly “attack’d him” for threatening the harmony of the Society. Startled by the accusation, the disciple “ask’d her who told her of it.” The Friend responded by asking “if he didn’t think she know all about it, without any information,” thus giving the impression that the knowledge came through supernatural means. Brownell closed by saying, “Thus I have reason to conclude many things are pretendedly carried along from one degree to another, until people get as zealous and to set as much by her and the religion she is endeavouring to propagate.”54 An anonymous writer who submitted a letter to The Freeman’s Journal hit on the same theme of fraud. The author claimed that the Friend was “artful to improve” the impression of divine grace. In particular, his sermons and private conversations were “usually accompanied with an appearance of high authority, and seeming sanctity” so his audience could be “prepared for a farther deception.” The letter also leveled charges of deceit against the prophet’s disciples. It admitted that some members of the sect might be “simple and sincere” and hobbled by a “delusion of their understanding.” However, it continued, “with respect to the principal persons in this society . . . they are villainous impostors.” The piece saved its most venomous attack for James Parker. It described him as “artful, conceited, and illiterate; and, as the countenance of

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a man is sometimes a tell tale, so those who are skilled in physiognomy may see in his face the cunning which lies hid in his heart . . . he is crafty, but cold and unanimating.”55 During this period many people regarded deception, seduction, and desire as feminine vices. Indeed, this list of womanly faults was rooted in the biblical story of Eve and humankind’s fall from grace. Thus it is revealing that the letter in The Freeman’s Journal so forcefully attached these characteristics to a man. Here as elsewhere, the discourse surrounding the Universal Friends habitually, if implicitly, spoke of how they transgressed and jumbled gender distinctions. There were also a few writers who defended the character of the Universal Friend and his adherents. They portrayed them as a truly godly group of people. Some admitted that the prophet and his converts might have suffered from some form of mania, but they argued that their religious professions were genuine. An anonymous defense of the Universal Friends that appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper in March 1787 emphasized their devout, respectable behavior. Commenting on their exceptional dress, the writer downplayed its provocative nature and, instead, asserted that “the females (outside robe excepted) with the men friends may safely and with propriety challenge the strictest of Friends, or Quakers, for decency and plainness.” The letter went on to describe one of the Comforter’s sermons which, according to its author, he presented “with an agreeable sweetness and elegance” and “propriety.” As for Sarah Richards, the piece described her as “a valuable and amiable woman” who was honest and upright. A traveler reached a similar conclusion after meeting the Universal Friend in the early nineteenth century. He depicted the prophet as “fanatically religious” but admitted that, “there is good reason to believe that she is sincerely religious; her moral conduct is irreproachable.”56 Unfortunately for the Universal Friends, these positive assessments were in the minority, and by the spring of 1788 the media campaign against the Society reached a crescendo.

Murder and Seduction On the evening of January 4, 1787, an incident took place at the home of David Wagener that became a lightning rod for debate over the Society of Universal Friends. In the months that followed, several items discussing the night’s events appeared in Philadelphia newspapers. They all focused on the allegation that Abigail Dayton, one of the Universal Friend’s New England disciples, had attempted to murder Sarah Wilson, a recent convert from Philadelphia. Coverage of the story portrayed it, not as the act of a single person, but as the product of a conspiracy executed by some of the prophet’s chief

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followers. As with the larger discourse concerning the Universal Friends, this tale of attempted murder betrays a broader concern with seduction and social instability during the revolutionary era and, more precisely, a preoccupation with how the Universal Friend and his sect upended gender norms. On March 28, 1787, a letter signed “Z” appeared in The Pennsylvania Gazette. It was the first shot in a salvo of writings aimed at discrediting the Society of Universal Friends by tying it to the alleged murder attempt. It featured testimony from Sarah Wilson and purported to be an accurate account “of a most horrid design formed against her life.” The author explained that on the night of January 4, Sarah Richards held an evening meeting of the Friend’s Pennsylvania converts at David Wagener’s home. Among those who attended were several neophytes from Philadelphia, including Sarah Wilson, her sister Mary Bramwell, her daughter Betsy, and Rachel Malin. Sarah Wilson recalled that “the conversation turned upon some strange phenomenas that had been seen” and claimed that when she suggested that such events may not have been signs from God but could be “accounted for in a natural way,” some of those at the meeting perceived her comments as “impious” and took offense. Specifically, Wilson asserted that Abigail Dayton was upset by her words and told her “to take care what I said against them, for very strange things had happened to people who had talked against the Friend; that sudden deaths had happened to some, and great misfortunes to others.”57 After the meeting was over, those attending went to bed. Wilson recalled that she, Mary Bramwell, her daughter Betsy, Sarah Richards, Rachel Malin, and Abigail Dayton were all to sleep in the same room but admitted that she started an argument over who would sleep with whom in its two beds. Richards and Bramwell ended up leaving as a result of the tiff, leaving Betsy and Dayton to claim one bed and Malin and Wilson the other. After this sorting out of sleeping partners, things quieted down, although Dayton remained up writing by candlelight. Wilson also remained awake, so she was able to describe what happened next. When the clock struck one, Wilson, who pretended to be asleep, saw Dayton stand up, tip-toe toward her, and hold a candle close to her face. Dayton then went into an “apothecary’s shop” that adjoined the room. Later, in the moonlight, Wilson saw Dayton come back into the bedroom without her candle and quietly approach in the dark. Wilson then spoke, asking Dayton what she was up to, but Dayton made no reply and retreated downstairs. Not long after, she returned with a lighted candle, undressed, and went to bed. Alarmed by this strange behavior, Wilson remained awake, fearing that Dayton would take her “at a disadvantage” if she fell asleep. As an added precaution, she moved to the opposite side of her bed. Soon after, Anna Styer,

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a convert and friend of the Wagener family who had been up late, came into the room and got into Wilson’s bed, taking the place that she had so recently occupied. At this point Wilson finally fell asleep, but at what she estimated to be three-o’clock in the morning, “a noise like somebody strangling” awoke her. She then saw “Abigail Dayton upon the body of the young women who lay in the place that I had removed from, with one of her hands at the young woman’s throat, and the other upon her mouth and nose, endeavouring to stop her breath.” Wilson cried out, and Dayton let go, retreating to her own bed. Soon the room was in a tumult and Sarah Richards came to see what was the matter. Wilson described to Richards “in what manner she [Dayton] had acted during the night, and told her she meant to murder me, and then to have my sudden death represented to the world as a judgment from the Almighty.” Richards and David Wagener tried to assure Wilson “that the devil had assumed friend Dayton’s shape to deceive” her. To this, Wilson defiantly replied that she “had more charity for the devil than to believe any such thing.” These bizarre events had an equally bizarre aftermath. Two days later, Sarah Richards sent for Wilson, telling her that she had a vision that revealed what actually happened that night. When Wilson arrived, Richards explained that her vision confirmed Wilson’s account of events “except that it was the devil who had assumed friend Dayton’s shape.” Furthermore, Richards said she saw Wilson in “a large field with a grave in it” with “one foot in it, and the other on the brink,” and then she saw her with a drop of water suspended over her head. This, according to Richards, represented “the last drop of mercy that ever wou’d be offered to me.” Finally, she explained that Wilson “had let in seven devils” and that “an Angel with flaming sword” was ready to cut her in two. The meaning of all this could not be clearer: Abigail Dayton was guiltless and Sarah Wilson was the one whose soul was in peril. This tale became fuel for a media assault on the Universal Friends. Here, however, the charges leveled against the sect went beyond blasphemy and fraud to serious criminal conduct. Several authors called for the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the alleged attempt on Sarah Wilson’s life. Z suggested that “it may be proper to take some serious notice of those people [the Universal Friends] in a judicial way.” Another anonymous letter, signed “VOX POPULI,” which appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette on April 4, was more blunt in its assessment. It called attention to “a preconcerted plan, by a number of Jemimah Wilkinson’s deluded followers” to murder Sarah Wilson and asked, “Ought not so diabolical a transaction to be immediately enquired into by those who are in authority?” The author noted that while Abigail Dayton had already returned to New England, Sarah Richards and

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David Wagener were still available for questioning “about this dark affair.” VOX POPULI continued, “What security has Mrs. Wilson, whose escape from death at that time was purely providential, for her life, granting she should ever be so unfortunate as to fall into their hands again?” In other words, the Friend’s followers were dangerous; they had sought to murder Sarah Wilson and were likely to try to finish the job if they ever got a second chance. The writer also asserted, though “proof cannot be so easily obtained,” that it was likely “many already have fallen victims, by reason of their opposition to the cause and interest of Jemimah Wilkinson.” VOX POPULI thus took one allegation of attempted murder and extrapolated from it to conclude that the Universal Friends were cold-blooded killers.58 According to these critics, what happened on the night of January 4 was not a result of the actions of a deranged individual but of a coordinated effort to promote the impression that Jemima Wilkinson was a divine prophet. They latched onto the storyline that the attempt on Sarah Wilson’s life was a product of dangerous religious zealotry and cunning opportunism. As Wilson and her supporters explained it, she had upset the prophet’s disciples by expressing views “which they thought were rather disrespectful of their society.” To many commentators, however, anger was not the primary catalyst for the attempt on her life. Rather, cold calculation motivated the attack. By killing Wilson in her sleep, the Universal Friends hoped to give the impression that she was the victim of a heaven-sent punishment. Sarah Wilson’s sister Elizabeth Beyerle provided testimony that supported this scenario. She alleged that she heard Abigail Dayton tell Wilson that the Lord was about to cut her “off the face of the earth” and she would “die the death eternal” for her “disobedience.” The implication being that Dayton was laying the foundation for the idea that Wilson’s death was an act of God’s providence.59 This motivation bespoke of premeditation and a wider conspiracy that involved Wilkinson’s chief followers. Z, VOX POPULI, and Sarah Wilson not so subtly asserted that at least Sarah Richards and David Wagener aided and abetted Abigail Dayton’s murderous intentions. Wilson recalled that the two had traded winks and knowing looks on the night Dayton tried to strangle her—clear signs that they were all privy to the scheme. Moreover, she claimed that Richards and Wagener were the “instigators” of the plot and accused them of seeking to discredit what she saw by saying that she must have dreamed it. Wilson and those who stood behind her version of events perceived Sarah Richards’s alleged vision as nothing more than a brazen attempt to cow Wilson into keeping quiet. Wilson also testified that Sarah Richards later came to Philadelphia and all but confessed to the crime. According to her account, Richards “fell down

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on her knees before me, and wept exceedingly, and begged of me repeatedly to forgive her.”60 Even the Universal Friend, who was hundreds of miles away in New England at the time, became enmeshed in these accusations of conspiracy. In what can only be described as an act of malicious speculation, Z implicated the prophet in the alleged murder plot: As they believe Jemimah is Christ, so they think she knows ever their secret thoughts; it therefore seems reasonable to infer that if they have privately taken the life of any person, or attempted it, it must be with her approbation, for they do implicitly observe all her directions, and would not dare without her consent to attempt so horrid an enterprise as that of TAKING AWAY LIFE, when they are known to wait her will or pleasure in transactions of inferior consequences. Simply put, the author asserted that the Friend’s followers would not have hatched such a plan without his approval. These efforts to associate the prophet with the supposed attempt on Sarah Wilson’s life had some effect. In later years the story of what happened that January night evolved into a tale which featured the Universal Friend as the central character. Shortly after the Comforter’s death in 1819, an article appeared in the Pittsburgh Mercury that included an account of the incident in which it was the prophet, “dressed in white, with a veil over her head,” who crept up on Wilson in the dark and attempted to strangle her.61 Letters appeared in Philadelphia newspapers that sought to defend the Universal Friends against these accusations. Abigail Dayton presented her version of events in The Freeman’s Journal on August 22. She started her account by observing that the “spirit of persecution, is always persuing the prophets of the Lord, as it was in the days of Elijah the prophet; and myself, like him, have fled to the mountain of the Lord, or truth itself.” Dayton confirmed some of Sarah Wilson’s narrative. There was a meeting at the home of David Wagener that night, she did share a bedroom with Wilson, and Wilson did accuse Abigail of trying to choke her. Beyond this, Dayton’s testimony contradicted Wilson’s account. She asserted that she never threatened Wilson. Dayton admitted that she stayed up late writing and did go to the apothecary’s shop “to get what I wanted to use on my own body,” but she denied ever sneaking up to Wilson’s bed in the dark. Instead, she claimed that Wilson had called to her and asked for a “bed p__” (chamber pot). After falling asleep, Dayton stated that Anna Styer woke her, saying that something was the matter with Wilson and she found her “in a rage” and acting “very strangely.” As for the idea that she had

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choked Styer, Dayton declared that the charge was “absolutely false as ever any thing was true.”62 As with much of the debate over the Universal Friends, it is difficult to judge the credibility of the accusations against or accounts defending the Society. Though Wilson’s story is plausible, there were several other women in the room that night and none of them corroborated her version of events (although it is only fair to point out that they did not come forward to confirm Dayton’s version of events either).63 It is certainly a possibility that all of these potential witnesses were simply asleep and thus heard and saw nothing. Of course, the exception to this is Anna Styer. If she was truly attacked that night, she would have certainly been able to corroborate that aspect of Wilson’s story. The fact that she gave no public testimony means that either Wilson was lying or, as Richards, Wagener, and Dayton insisted, she had mistaken a dream for reality. Of course, there is a third explanation and one that opponents of the sect put forward: none of the women testified on Wilson’s behalf because they were under the power and delusion of the Universal Friend. In spite of the difficulties of sorting out fact from fabrication, there is some convincing evidence that Sarah Wilson’s accusations were groundless. In his journal, Christopher Marshall describes how Wilson met with the Universal Friend in May 1788. Although he was not there, he claimed to have obtained his information about the meeting “from one present.” According to Marshall, Sarah admitted that people in Philadelphia who opposed the prophet had, “thro persuasion,” convinced her to publish a false account of her experiences that night in order to discredit the Universal Friends. He also reported that two of the women who were in the bedroom with Wilson that night, including “the person said to be injured as mentioned by Sally [Anna Styer], solemnly declared that they had no knowledge of the affair in any kind or shape whatever.” This secondhand information represents Styer’s only documented denial of Wilson’s claims.64 Of course, because of his ties to the Society, Marshall was no impartial observer. Nevertheless, the fact that he only recorded this story in his private diary—where it would be of no use in repairing the Universal Friend’s reputation—makes it appear that his account was not a story manufactured to sway public opinion. Christopher Marshall’s claim that Sarah Wilson’s accusations were false appears even more credible when considered in the context of the young woman’s involvement with the Universal Friends. Wilson and her married sisters, Mary Bramwell and Elizabeth Beyerle, began to associate with the Universal Friends during the Comforter’s second visit to Philadelphia in 1784.65 It is clear, however, that relations between the Wilson family and the sect

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had soured by 1787. Specifically, the sisters’ father, George Wilson, sought to end their involvement with the Society. This was likely a response to Mary’s decision to leave her husband and children in order to follow the Friend. For George Wilson, spiritual seeking may have been acceptable but his daughter abandoning her roles as a wife and mother was not. The intense pressure he placed on Mary had its intended effect, and she left the sect and returned to her husband. It is possible that Sarah Wilson accused Abigail Dayton of attempted murder at the behest of her father. It is clear from a letter Sarah Richards sent to the Friend late in 1787 that she saw both Sarah Wilson and Elizabeth Beyerle as betrayers. She wrote that the latter was “two fold more a Child of hell than Before” and the former was “not only wicked but wickedness itself.”66 Whether or not they were true, the significance of the charges against the Universal Friends lies in what the public’s response to them reveals about wider apprehensions over maintaining “proper” gender norms in a republican society. On August 29, 1787, The Freeman’s Journal carried an anonymous letter to Abigail Dayton that clearly played on social anxieties. The letter was addressed “To the Most Holy Sybil, ABIGAIL DATON, a Fool by birth, and a Prophetess by profession.” With this stinging overture, the author set about ridiculing Dayton and the testimony she had published in the same paper just a week before. “My dear love,” the letter began: “I am really charmed with the pretty manner in which you justify yourself of the intended murder of Sarah Wilson . . . as she is a wicked wretch, who does not believe in prophets, I think you would have done right in giving her a little bit of strangling of the Lord’s sake—For the Lord loves mightily to see necks stretched, and the heads of the children of Babylon dashed against the stones.” After this sarcastic allusion to Dayton’s guilt and religious mania, the author engaged in a withering assault on her character—an assault in which gender was the prime weapon. At one point the writer focused on Abigail’s late-night visit to the apothecary shop adjoining the room where she and Sarah Wilson slept: But, my dearest love, I am sorry to see that you was obliged to go into the apothecary’s shop before you went to bed.—Now, what had you to do in that apothecary’s shop, and what drugs were they that you wanted to use upon your own body?—You must know this disgusts me a little as a lover of yours, and makes me imagine you are not quite so cleanly as I would wish you to be. . . . for that I must suppose it was some nasty stuff which must have made you smell rather disagreeable. Besides this scurrilous passage’s clear sexual overtones, it conveys the image of womanhood gone wrong. It implies that rather than being pure, Dayton was

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both physically and morally unclean—that her body and soul were tainted by “some nasty stuff.”67 Next, the letter turns to the part of Abigail’s testimony where she recalled handing a chamber pot to Sarah Wilson. The author leapt on this detail, using it to batter Dayton’s reputation: And what was it you handed to Sarah Wilson? You call it, I believe, the bed-p—. But what does p— stand for? I thought the Spirit which inspires you never spoke with dashes. If I am not mistaken, that p means something rather unbecoming the gravity of a prophetess, and you must have made a sweet figure in the act of performing that charitable office. I would give twenty pounds to have seen you at that precious moment, provided the spirit had not moved you to throw the contents of what you held in my face. This reference to the use of dashes rather than spelling out the word “bedpan” was a swipe at the Universal Friends’ claim to forthrightness and honesty rooted in the Quaker tradition of plain speech. More important, it creates an image of Dayton engaged in a very unlady-like activity. Dealing with chamber pots and their contents was the lot of servants and, thus, the open letter used both constructs of gender and class to lampoon Dayton’s religious pretensions. The item ends by calling the Friend’s disciple “a fool, or something worse” and reminding her “that in this State there are gallows for rogues, and bedlams for mad folks.”68 Lurking beneath commentary on the alleged murder plot against Sarah Wilson and the larger public debate over the Universal Friends was the specter of seduction. Indeed, many of the letters and articles that appeared in Philadelphia newspapers and periodicals concerning the Comforter and his disciples can be read as a warning to the unwary about the threat posed by religious fanatics and charlatans who posed as prophets. In a piece that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal on February 14, 1787, the cautionary nature of this discourse comes to the surface. The author observed that the group was “too ridiculous in itself to merit a moment’s notice, were it not, that some virtuous people are, and other may yet be drawn into the snare, and by degrees at length involved in the most fatal labyrinth of error.” He accused the Friend and his followers of being “villainous imposters” who sought to entrap the gullible in a web of deceit and blasphemy that would lead them toward their ruin. Another writing that appeared in the same newspaper exactly a month later struck the same tone. At one point its author opined, “I am far from thinking them the prophets of the Lord, but rather think them the prophets we are cautioned to beware of, and those that are spoken of, that come in sheeps cloathing, and are inwardly ravening wolves.”69

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The fear of seduction so consistently threads its way through commentary on the Universal Friends because, to contemporaries, the American Revolution had opened up opportunities for both human progress and human folly. It swept away an old order accused of hindering individual freedom, happiness, and success. However, along with liberty and independence, it also brought in uncertainty, instability, and risk. Some feared that for every person who found their way to reason and virtue in the new republic, another might be lost to falsehood, disorder, and demagogues. The Public Universal Friend and his Society appeared to be just such a source of danger: a seductive Siren leading the nation’s citizens toward disaster. In the spirit of life imitating art, testimony describing the alleged plot to murder Sarah Wilson has elements in common with the melodramatic novels that became popular in eighteenth-century America. At the heart of books like Clarissa, The Coquette, and Charlotte Temple were narratives of young women who had to pit their feminine virtue against the forces of seduction, usually in the form of an attractive, rakish suitor.70 The same themes appear in the media coverage of Wilson’s supposed brush with death. She, like the protagonist of many revolutionary-era novels, was a young woman trying to make her way in the world. Also like these fictional heroines, Sarah faced the dangers of seduction. In her case, however, the peril she faced was of a spiritual rather than sexual nature. Another feature of Wilson’s experience that distinguishes it from the era’s novels was the nature of her seducer. She did not find herself in the clutches of a disreputable young man but a band of religious seekers led by a strange prophet who claimed to be neither man nor woman. What these novels and the story of Sarah Wilson’s attempted murder ultimately have in common is that people employed them as metaphors to comment on the dangers that America faced as it strove to build a republican society. Like Wilson and the heroines of Clarissa, The Coquette, and Charlotte Temple, the nation faced a difficult path in which it had to pit its virtue against social and political forces of seduction that threatened to lead it astray. One of these threats was gender-bending prophets like the Universal Friend who would beguile the unwary and deliver them into the arms of a religious mania corrosive to the very foundations of the republic. The strange tale of Abigail Dayton’s alleged attempt on Sarah Wilson’s life was just one part of a much larger public debate over the Public Universal Friend and his sect that raged during the period of his Pennsylvania ministry. Like most of the commentary on the prophet and his followers, this allegation rested on rumor and prejudice rather than a level-headed assessment of

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the facts and does as much to obscure the Universal Friends as shed light on them. But no matter what their shortcomings in terms of accuracy, such writings speak volumes about public apprehensions concerning social and gender disorder during the revolutionary era and clearly show that many saw the sect as a profound threat to the status quo. Much of this public discourse presented the Universal Friend as a seductive figure who threatened to beguile the unwary and draw them away from their families and the path of reason and virtue so critical to the survival of the republic. The war of words that erupted in response to the holy messenger’s arrival in Pennsylvania also shaped the future direction of his ministry. The largely negative response the prophet encountered there fed a growing determination to abandon the world to its fate and seek refuge away from the jeering crowds and furious printing presses of the East. To this end, the Friend and his disciples made the fateful decision to build a community of the faithful along the frontier.

Ch ap ter 5

Exodus And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey —Exodus 3:8

Like the Israelites of old, the story of the Universal Friends features an escape into the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. Discouraged by the harassment of nonbelievers, the prophet turned from spreading his holy message and, like Moses, led his people on a quest for a new home where they could live according to God’s law. The Friend and his adherents began planning their exodus in the mid-1780s and by decade’s end had established a settlement in the wilds of central New York as a refuge from a world steeped in sin. Ruth Pritchard kept a record of the Public Universal Friend’s 1790 trek to join a vanguard of disciples who had pioneered the sect’s fledgling frontier community. Though the prophet and his followers were not pursued by enemies as Moses and his people had been, Pritchard tells of how they faced their own obstacles, namely poor roads and bad weather. She, along with Armenia and Sarah Potter, Mary Bean, Anna Styer, Barnabas Brown, Benajah Botsford, and a child who Ruth only referred to as “little Alice,” formed an advanced party that traveled ahead of the Universal Friend’s entourage. They left the Society’s base at Worcester, Pennsylvania, on February 19, headed north toward Nazareth, and then crossed Blue Mountain into the more sparsely populated northeastern part of the state. Here conditions worsened. Pritchard’s journal entry for February 23 reads, “Snow this day under the load of snow, The lofty Pines did bend!—from thence 6 Miles in the rain; 114

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through the swamp; all on foot some of the time; a very bad road.” The group’s wagon got stuck and Ruth and her companions “were obliged to encamp under a large Hemlock” in the pouring rain. “As for the pleasantness of my companions in the tedious march,” Pritchard commented, “I shall omit to mention at this time.” They traveled for two more days along “excessive bad roads” before they reached the Wyoming Valley along the north branch of the Susquehanna River. Here the party split up: Benajah continued on his way to New York to inform the Universal Friends there of the prophet’s impending arrival, Barnabas retraced his steps south in order to meet up with the main group and guide them to Wyoming, while Ruth and her female companions found lodging and made preparations for the next stage of the journey. On March 17 the Universal Friend, Sarah Richards, and other members of the Society joined the advanced party at Wyoming. They all departed six days later, traveling by boat up the Susquehanna River. Among the goods and provisions they took with them was a coach the Friend had obtained in Philadelphia, in which the prophet and Richards slept. On March 27 they disembarked and held a meeting at the home of Uriah Parsons where, according to Pritchard, “14 or more attended not of the Friends.” Several days later, the Friend and his followers went ashore and held a meeting at Wysock in the home of Simon Spaulding. By April 6 they had crossed the Pennsylvania state line near Tioga Point and passed into New York. The group had to leave their boats at Newtown (Elmira) and make the rest of their journey overland. On April 10 they started out for the head of Seneca Lake (present-day Watkin’s Glen), which they reached in just a couple of days. Three days later Pritchard wrote, “The Friend, Sarah, & all of us set off in boat for the Friends Settlement,” covering the last twenty miles to their destination before sunset. When they arrived, “The Friend had a prayer by the shoar” and then held a “Great evening meeting.”1 The Universal Friend and his Society turned their backs on the East and set their sights on establishing a community of the faithful along the frontier in the hope that it would serve as a sanctuary from the turmoil of a godless society. Unfortunately, rather than being a place of peace and tranquility, discord plagued the revolutionary-era backcountry, and the Universal Friends’ dream turned into a nightmare of shattered fortunes and bitter property disputes. One source of trouble was that the vast scope and rapid pace of frontier settlement undermined all efforts to regulate it—the result was often a chaotic scramble for land. Starting as a trickle before the Revolutionary War, migration to the backcountry turned into a flood after its end, as tens of thousands of pioneers headed out in search of opportunity. In the decades

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following independence this land rush reached its peak, and between 1790 and 1820 Americans occupied and improved more land than in the previous two centuries of European colonization. Territorial disputes between colonies and, later, states compounded rapid rates of frontier settlement to transform the backcountry into a cauldron of contention. On the frontier, political boundaries were often unclear, and the result was intense and, at times, deadly conflict. Because of vague or flawed royal charters it was often unclear where one jurisdiction ended and another began. Added to this were problems that arose from Indians’ use-based conception of property rights which often led to Natives “selling” the same piece of land to several European purchasers. The result of all of this was a welter of legal disputes and violence among rival land claimants. These problems did not evaporate with American Independence but reached a climax in the last decades of the eighteenth century.2 As with other frontier settlers, the Universal Friends made the decision to head to the backcountry in response to difficulties in the East and the lure of land and freedom in the West. Like thousands of others, they also discovered that the pursuit of property was a conflict-ridden process, and establishing clear title to land in New York ended up posing a serious problem for the sect. In addition, like pioneers across the early American frontier, the Comforter and his followers faced the daunting task of carving a community out of the forest. Though Mother Nature did not easily relinquish her grip on the land, they also struggled against far more challenging human adversaries. The threat came not from outsiders but apostates whose drive for property and power overcame their loyalty to the Friend. By the late 1780s, the Society had managed to establish an enclave on the west shore of Seneca Lake known as the Friend’s Settlement. However, dissension and disloyalty among its inhabitants soon drove the prophet and a portion of his disciples to create a second settlement, which came to be known as Jerusalem, just to the north of Crooked (Keuka) Lake in the early 1790s.

Out from Egypt The Universal Friend’s ministry took a significant turn in the 1780s. Rather than focusing on extensive preaching tours and winning over new converts, the prophet devoted himself to establishing the “New Jerusalem” spoken of in the Book of Revelation—an asylum where his sect could grow in grace and live according to God’s law. Gone were the hopes that the Comforter’s labors would result in a tidal wave of converts, and what replaced them were simply efforts to consolidate the following the holy

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messenger had already gained. The decision to move to the frontier was the key event in this shift. After the Friend’s second visit to Pennsylvania in the fall of 1784, the Society began to lay plans for its exodus. Their intended destination was central or western New York. This region, which had long been part of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois) homeland, came to the attention of white settlers after the Revolutionary War. In 1779 General George Washington ordered a large American force under General John Sullivan to invade Iroquoia in order to destroy those among the Six Nations allied to the British and end their warriors’ raids on American settlements. While laying waste to Haudenosaunee villages, orchards, and fields, Sullivan’s men also took note of the fertile land through which they marched. Stories soon spread about the region’s rich soils—especially those of the Genesee Valley— and it became a prime postwar destination for settlers and land developers.3 In 1785 Jemima Wilkinson’s younger brother, Jeptha, left Rhode Island for the New York frontier and spent the winter there exploring. Another member of the Society, Ezekiel Shearman, followed in the spring of 1786. He was not that impressed with the lands he saw and put off by what he perceived as the hostility of the region’s Native inhabitants. Shearman’s less than glowing report did not derail plans for the move west, for later that year the Universal Friends held a meeting at New Milford, Connecticut, during which they decided to send Thomas Hathaway Sr., Abraham Dayton, and Richard Smith to central New York to explore the area and recommend a site for settlement. The party set off in 1787 and took a roundabout path to their destination. They traveled with the Universal Friend on his third trip to Pennsylvania, then followed the Susquehanna River up to the New York border, and, from there, made their way to Kanadesaga (Geneva). From this base they viewed the surrounding countryside and decided that the Society should locate its settlement somewhere along the western shore of Seneca Lake, though they did not identify a specific site.4 The Friend’s Pennsylvania ministry served as a stepping stone to New York in a number of ways. Geographically, central New York was accessible from Pennsylvania, with a relatively easy passage to the region via the Susquehanna Valley. There is also good reason to believe that the prophet became aware of Pennsylvania’s Ephrata Commune—a group of German pietists whose religiously inspired community life prefigured the Universal Friends’ communitarian experiment. In 1774 Christopher Marshall Sr. had opened a correspondence with the leader of the Ephrata community and, thus, was in a position to familiarize the Friend with the group during his

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repeated visits to Marshall’s home. Alternatively, though there are no direct ties between the Friend and fellow prophet Ann Lee, it is also possible that he had gotten wind of the fact that the Shaker leader had established a religious community in New York’s upper Hudson Valley at Niskeyuna.5 Thus one or both of these sects may have influenced the Universal Friend’s decision to create a sectarian enclave. By the late 1780s it was clear that the prophet was determined to make the move to New York. On his third visit to Pennsylvania in 1787, he labored to convince the small core of disciples there to join in the quest to establish a New Jerusalem on the frontier. This goal seems to have been very much on the Friend’s mind in a letter to one of his leading Pennsylvania converts, David Wagener. In it the Comforter warned, “O do, dear soul, haste, Escape for they Life’s up! Get thee out of this place, for the Lord will destroy it: tarry not in all the plains of Sodom, for there is no place there for soul to sit down to rest in.” By the fall of 1788, the Friend was very open about plans to head west. On November 22, the Reverend Ezra Stiles noted in his diary that “Miss Jemima Wikinson passed thro’ this Town returning from Philadelphia to Rhode Island. Sir Isaacs saw her at the Coffe house & conversed with her. . . . She said she should go to the Jenisee Country after next Wheat Harvest.”6 The Friend spent the next two months in New England putting affairs there in order before heading back to Pennsylvania. This included selling the Society’s meetinghouses in Rhode Island and Connecticut to help fund their settlement in New York; allaying sect members’ doubts about abandoning family and property in the East for an unknown future in the West; and laying plans for the transport of scores of men, women, and children along with their livestock and household goods hundreds of miles into the interior. Having accomplished all this, the Friend left Rhode Island in January 1789—it was the last time the prophet would ever see New England again. Traveling through Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, his party reached Worcester in February.7 The Comforter and his followers fixed their eyes on a land that was coveted by many. In the decade following the Revolutionary War, the Six Nations, state and federal governments, and powerful land speculators all vied for possession of central and western New York. Meanwhile, the British, who stood nearby in Canada, sought to extend their influence into the region by currying favor among its Native inhabitants. Still reeling from the destruction and internal divisions brought on by the war, the Haudenosaunee found themselves in a difficult position. The Treaty of Paris, which had ended the conflict, officially gave the United States sovereignty over their territory. This, combined with American settlers’ voracious appetite for acres,

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meant that the Six Nations faced intense pressure to part with their land. Starting with the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1784, the United States, the State of New York, and wealthy American land developers chipped away at the Haudenosaunee homeland. However, preoccupied with a war against Indians in the Ohio Valley and fearful of driving the Six Nations into the waiting arms of the British, the United States held back on their efforts to appropriate Haudenosaunee land through much of the 1780s. It was not until the mid 1790s, after military victory over the Ohio Indians and the signing of the Jay Treaty with the British (which resulted in the latter withdrawing from their military posts in western New York), that Americans were able to aggressively push into Iroquoia.8 The dispossession of western New York’s Native inhabitants only served to ignite a struggle among states, white settlers, and land speculators. In particular, New York and Massachusetts sought control over the region. Based on their seventeenth-century royal charter, which theoretically gave it control of territory extending to the Mississippi River, Massachusetts petitioned Congress in 1784 for possession of present-day New York west of the eightysecond milestone of the Pennsylvania-New York border. The stage seemed set for a violent clash over land, but New York and Massachusetts turned to arbitration instead of confrontation. In 1786 representatives from the two states met at Hartford, Connecticut, and hammered out a deal. Massachusetts won “preemption” rights over western New York, which meant that it had the right to sell the land and reap whatever profit they gained from it. In return, New York gained political jurisdiction over the contested area.9 The agreement between New York and Massachusetts paved the way for the region’s occupation by thousands of American settlers, including the Universal Friends. Like the prophet and his disciples, these newcomers overwhelmingly hailed from New England, where a growing population, limited land base, and poor soil convinced many to migrate to central and western New York where land was available, cheap, and fertile. This folk movement grew in strength in the 1780s and was a virtual flood by the following decade. For instance, during one three-day period in February 1795, more than twelve-hundred sleighs carrying New Englanders and their possessions passed through Albany on their way west. In all, more than 800,000 people left New England around the turn of the century, and many either made a home in New York or passed through it in their search for land and opportunity. Therefore, while the Universal Friends’ motives for going west may have been unique, they were not alone in their errand into the wilderness, and the vision they held of living in isolation from a sinful world would prove unrealistic.10

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Wandering in the Wilderness In the opening months of 1788, the Universal Friends took their plans beyond exploring potential sites for a settlement and bought land in central New York. One of the prophet’s chief lieutenants, James Parker, made the deal on behalf of the Society. On April 14 Parker wrote a letter from Hudson, New York, to Abraham Dayton in New Milford, reporting that he had obtained a large tract of land in the “Boston preemption” just to the west of Seneca Lake with “as good Title as to any land in the world and the best land I ever seen in this world.” Parker also trumpeted that he had bought the property at bargain rates, declaring, “It appears that my ventures & Labours has saved 40. or 50. or 60. or near a hundred Thousand Dollars for friends.” He advised that the Society send out a pioneering party including “only those fit for Labour & three women.” The agreement Parker described sounded too good to be true and, as it turned out, it was. Rather than a quick path to the Promised Land, Parker’s purchase was the beginning of a long, arduous sojourn through a tangled wilderness of conflicting property claims and shady land deals.11 The Society set the stage for this purchase at a meeting in 1786 when they established a common fund to buy land. Thus, from the start, the Universal Friends envisioned their settlement as a collective endeavor. They did not, however, conflate community with communalism: though the sect intended to buy a tract of land in common, its members expected to receive private possession of a part of it proportional to the contribution they made to its purchase. The settlement, therefore, was a product of two distinct impulses. On the one hand, their plan was an expression of religious devotion; on the other, it was firmly rooted in the pursuit of property. It does appear that, at least initially, there was a communitarian ethic to the Friends’ purchase that blunted the sharper edges of economic inequality and encouraged the migration of the sect’s poorer members. As James Parker later explained, “Several familys among us we have helped there, & Intended to help them to Some Lands because they could not help them Selves.” In other words, though some in the Society would end up with more land than others, the group pledged to provide its most disadvantaged members with enough property to at least guarantee their sustenance.12 Initial expectations ran high, but a cloud soon settled over Parker’s purchase. The trouble grew out of aggressive competition among speculators for New York’s valuable frontier lands. Massachusetts, in the midst of a fiscal crisis and badly in need of cash, was eager to sell the portion of western New York it had won with the Hartford agreement of 1786. In 1787 two Massachusetts

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land developers, Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, formed a partnership in order to purchase it, and after a period of negotiation, they bought over 6 million acres for £300,000 in Massachusetts’s state currency on April 1, 1788.13 Phelps and Gorham were not the only ones interested in making a profit from the settlement of western New York. In the fall of 1787, the wealthy, powerful, and well-connected Hudson Valley landlord Colonel John Livingston, in league with other prominent New Yorkers and even some British officials based just across the Niagara frontier in Canada, hatched a bold plan. In order to sidestep the law that only the state of New York could buy land directly from its Indian inhabitants, Livingston aimed to obtain a long-term lease from the Haudenosaunee. By 1788, he and his associates, who became known as the Lessees, managed to acquire a 999-year lease on over 18 million acres of land from the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Oneida nations. By renting this vast tract to settlers, the Lessees hoped to reap windfall profits.14 Unfortunately, a large portion of the tract won by the Lessees overlapped the claim of Phelps and Gorham, with all the land the New Yorkers held west of the Massachusetts’s Preemption Line falling within the two partners’ purchase. The Lessees and the Phelps and Gorham partnership decided that western New York was big enough for the two of them and, instead of contesting each other’s claims, struck a deal they hoped would enable all of them to profit. The Lessees agreed to relinquish their hold on property claimed by the partners and help them translate their acquisition of Massachusetts’s preemption rights into an actual purchase of land from the Haudenosaunee. In return, the Lessees obtained outright ownership of four six-by-six mile townships on the eastern edge of the Massachusetts’s Preemption as well as the opportunity to gain a one-sixth interest in the Phelps-Gorham partnership. In other words, the Lessees had the chance to secure rights to 1 million of the 6 million acres the partners had purchased from Massachusetts—all they had to do was pay for it within three years. This agreement worked out well for Phelps and Gorham, and the Lessees helped them broker a purchase from the Haudenosaunee for more than 2.5 million acres between the Preemption Line and the Genesee River on July 8, 1788. For this vast territory, the partners only paid five thousand dollars down and an annuity of five hundred dollars.15 The Universal Friends entered into this complicated landscape of property claims and land deals. James Parker negotiated his 1788 purchase with the New York Lessees. In return for £270, Livingston and his partners granted Parker 14,000 acres of land in the seventh township of the first range of the Phelps and Gorham purchase (one of the four townships the Massachusetts land developers had granted to the Lessees). The deal specified that the tract was to be “laid in one body, in order to accommodate

Map 3. The Friends’ settlements in New York

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the said Parker and his associates and the more to facilitate their immediate Settlement.”16 Considering the ultimate fate of the Lessees’ scheme, it was unfortunate that Parker decided to obtain land from them instead of Phelps and Gorham. Soon after Livingston and his associates obtained their leases from the Six Nations, New York’s Assembly and governor, George Clinton, rejected their legitimacy and worked to foil the speculators’ plans. Though the Lessees were rich and influential, they could not muster enough power to face down the state of New York. In the end, Governor Clinton negotiated his own land cessations with the Haudenosaunee that nullified Livingston’s lease, accused the Lessees of treason, and mobilized the militia to impose state authority over its western lands. Outmaneuvered and daunted by the show of force, the group surrendered its leases to state authorities in February 1789. Although John Livingston and some other diehards tried to keep their speculating scheme alive (including a failed attempt in 1793 to form western New York into a separate state), the Lessees’ plan to secure millions of frontier acres ended in failure.17 James Parker’s efforts to obtain cheap, plentiful land for the Universal Friends became a casualty of the Lessees’ demise. Even before the company lost its battle with the state, financial difficulties led to the collapse of the deal they had brokered with Phelps and Gorham. Specifically, they failed to make the payments they promised in return for a one-sixth interest in the Massachusetts’s Preemption. In the end, the Lessees only retained possession of the four townships just west of the Preemption Line that Phelps and Gorham had already deeded to them. In November 1788, the company divided up this land among their numerous shareholders, and the Universal Friends found themselves in possession of a measly 1,104 acres in a thin strip six miles long and ninetytwo rods wide that became known as “The Garter.” This tract was a mere shadow of the 14,000 acres the Lessees had promised to Parker. Johnathan Botsford, who had contributed money to the Society’s purchase fund, expected to receive a thousand acres for his investment; instead, he only ended up with thirteen or fourteen acres. Besides losing the promise of a consolidated tract of land large enough to settle all the Universal Friends, Parker and the Society also squandered a large sum of money. In a petition he later sent to Governor Clinton asking for compensation, Parker stated that he and his associates lost “about £800 of New York Currancy” that they had paid to the Lessees.18 As if the situation was not bad enough, the location of the Friends’ purchase also proved to be a serious problem. Unfortunately, their land was on the eastern edge of the Massachusetts’s Preemption. This would not have been a source of trouble if it had not been for inaccuracies in the initial survey of the line separating the preemption lands from the rest of New York.

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The first attempt to establish what became known as the Preemption Line took place in the summer of 1788. Under the guidance of the experienced surveyor Hugh Maxwell, a party started at the Pennsylvania–New York border in July and moved north to Lake Ontario, finishing the survey in late August or early September. It is worth noting at this point that Parker and the Society’s pioneer party arrived at their claim in June and started clearing the land and building cabins before the Preemption Line was run through their neighborhood. As Parker later explained in his petition to New York’s governor and land commissioners, he and his fellow pioneers waited considerable time at great Expense before Phelpses Treaty with the Indians was Completed and when that treaty was over [ July 1788] the Ceason was so far Spent that if we had waited to have the preemption line run before we began Improvement we Must a lost our Crops for that year which would a hurt us greatly . . . therefore we Settled where we now are Expecting it was on our own Lands. The Friends assumed the line would pass to the east of them across Seneca Lake, but they were in for a shock. When Maxwell ran the line through their neighborhood, it went much farther west than they expected, putting most of their tract outside of the Massachusetts’s Preemption. In other words, the Friends discovered that they had settled on land that did not belong to the Lessees or even Phelps and Gorham, but to the State of New York!19 Finding out that they had located themselves on land that did not legally belong to them must have been discouraging to say the least. For all of his failings to this point, James Parker energetically set out to remedy the situation. On behalf of the Universal Friends, he pleaded their case to Governor Clinton and the Commissioners of the Land Office during a three-week visit to New York City in April and May 1791. In a petition Parker stated, “I Expect you will Judge it most for the benefit of the State to let us have these Lands” and then proceeded to explain why, recounting that their settlement consisted of “about Sixty familys are settled on & near them, in which Settlement we have a good Grist Mill & Saw mill. And carry on Necessary branches of Business which only a few common families could not due. which makes it easy for one or More families to Settle in our Neighborhood which otherwise they could not do. which as greatly Incouraged the Settling of that part of the State.” What Parker said made sense. The Friend’s Settlement contained people, cleared land, and essential grist and saw mills, all of which served as a magnet for other migrants. Therefore, he argued, whatever mistakes they made in locating their land should be placed against the services they had rendered to

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the state. This logic carried the day, and on May 9, 1791, New York conveyed to Parker on behalf of the Society of Universal Friends 12,000 acres of land covering much of their original purchase from the Lessees at the low price of a shilling (12.5 cents) an acre New York currency. When the tract was surveyed, it came to light that it actually contained 14,040 acres. Even though Parker succeeded in obtaining a grant from the state to replace the claim that dissolved in the wake of the Lessees’ collapse, it appears that the Universal Friends had lost faith in his skills as a land agent. On October 27, 1791, seventeen members of the Society who had advanced money to purchase land voted to replace Parker with Judge William Potter and Thomas Hathaway, Sr. The two new representatives collected money from members of the sect and paid the State of New York £1,000 on February 29, 1792 for the tract it had conveyed to them the previous year. Governor Clinton finalized the deal on October 10 when he issued a patent for the land to Parker, Potter, and Hathaway “as Tenants in common.”20 Even with this new land grant, the Friends were not out of the woods yet. Once again, the Preemption Line came back to haunt them. At some point after surveyors ran the line in 1788, people came to suspect that it was not accurate and lay to the west of where it actually should be. So, in November and December 1792, New York undertook a second survey and, lo and behold, discovered that the original line did veer to the west and was about two miles off course by the time it ended on the south shore of Lake Ontario. There are two possible reasons for the line’s inaccuracy. The most charitable conclusion is that it was a consequence of the primitive surveying instruments used. Whereas Hugh Maxwell had used the surveyor’s traditional (and chronically imprecise) tools—a sixty-six foot chain and mariner’s compass—the party that undertook the second survey used a newer and more accurate surveyor’s transit. The other explanation is that the first Preemption Line was sent off course on purpose. Here is where the New York Lessees again rear their heads. At least one of the men employed in Maxwell’s survey was connected to the Lessees, and it would have certainly been in the speculators’ interest to bend the Preemption Line west so as to keep the valuable settlement of Geneva in their possession and out of the hands of Phelps and Gorham.21 The running of a second Preemption Line once again threatened the Universal Friends’ land claims. With the line shifted back east, it became clear that a portion of the 14,000-acre tract New York had so recently given the Society was not theirs to convey, but was part of the Massachusetts’s Preemption. To make matters worse, the chain of ownership to this land had gotten very complicated. By this time, Phelps and Gorham had relinquished control of

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the massive tract. The partners discovered that the costs of developing western New York exceeded the income it generated. In consequence, they were unable to make the payments to Massachusetts, and Phelps and Gorham conveyed the preemption lands west of the Genesee River back to the state in February 1790. In August, they sold what remained of the eastern portion of their claim to the wealthy financier Robert Morris for $75,000. Next, in April 1792, Morris deeded the land to a group of British speculators known as the Pulteney Associates for $170,000. So, by the time the second Preemption line was run, the lands between the Genesee River and Seneca Lake had passed through the hands of three different owners. In January 1794, twenty-five Universal Friends holding claims west of the new Preemption Line petitioned the resident agent of the Pulteney Associates, Charles Williamson, asking him not to sell the farms they occupied to other persons. Luckily for them, Williamson honored their claims. These members of the Society managed to retain possession of their freeholds but had to pay for them a third time in order to do so.22 The majority of the lands that the Universal Friends had obtained from New York lay to the east of the new Preemption Line and thus seemed secure from any legal challenge; nevertheless, this property also became a source of contention that pitted members of the Society against one another. It seems that the profits to be reaped from investing in frontier lands became too enticing for several of the Comforter’s disciples to resist. Aggressive land speculation and the rapid development of central and western New York served to inflate property values in the region, and the 14,000-odd acres that New York had conveyed to James Parker and the Universal Friends in May 1791 for about eighteen cents an acre was worth thirty-three times that (or about six dollars an acre) by 1793. Put another way, the land deeded to the Friends for about $2,600 was worth about $86,000 just two years later! In a series of three meetings held on May 20, June 11, and August 15, 1793, William Potter, James Parker (he had been voted back in as an agent for the Society), and other prominent Universal Friends who had contributed money to the purchase from New York set in motion a process whereby most of the land ended up in their hands.23 Potter, Parker, and their confederates divided the property among themselves without considering the claims or improvements of other sect members who were already settled on it. Judge Potter, who had contributed the most toward the purchase, gained possession of nearly half of the 14,040-acre patent, which explains why the tract eventually became known as the Potter Location. The judge may have arrived in New York seeking spiritual salvation, but once he got there he quickly shifted his attention to increasing his wealth, and by 1790 he and his sons collectively owned over 55,000 acres

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(eighty-six square miles) of land in what would become Yates County. In the end, only seventeen investors received land. Besides William Potter, they included Thomas Hathaway Jr., James Parker, and Benedict Robinson. The rest of the Society’s pioneers got nothing and lost their lands, homes, and improvements. Among these unfortunates was Jedediah Holmes, Richard Smith, Asahel Stone, and Jemima Wilkinson’s widowed sister Marcy Aldridge. Holmes had been among the party that had first broken ground on the Friend’s Settlement in 1788; he ended up not only losing his farm, but also his wife, Elizabeth, who passed in February 1789—the first member of the Society to die in New York.24 Thomas Hathaway Sr. was greatly upset by this injustice and went to Albany to seek redress from the state government. William Carter, a lawyer and fellow adherent of the Universal Friend, encountered Hathaway while he was on his mission. Hathaway told him that he wanted “to set aside the large claim of Parker and Potter and to have the lands divided according to the original intention among the friends.” He came away disappointed, for the state ruled that it had conveyed the land to Potter and Parker, and the fact that they were only supposed to hold it on behalf of the Society was not legally established in the deed.25 Being taken in by sharp-dealing speculators like the Lessees must have been very dispiriting for the Friends, but being double-crossed by their coreligionists was downright demoralizing. The wild wheeling and dealing for land that marked the white settlement of western New York was the source of tensions within the Society of Universal Friends that would, in the long run, divide the prophet’s disciples into warring factions. More immediately, the difficulties the Universal Friends ran into while trying to obtain clear title to land put a damper on the sect’s plans to migrate west. Fearing further disputes, many members of the Society remained in the East. Moreover, even among those who had picked up everything and gone to New York, bad fortune and infighting began to sap their resolve and faith. For example, the family of Abigail and Abraham Dayton, two of the Universal Friend’s most devoted followers, decided that they had experienced enough trouble and moved to Canada in the winter of 1791–92. The Daytons had not lost their faith in the prophet, who they urged to come with them, but in their fellow disciples and their future in New York.26

Canaan In the face of the repeated setbacks, the Universal Friends forged ahead with their efforts to build a community of the faithful. Soon after making his initial purchase in 1788, James Parker led a twenty-five person pioneering

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party from New Milford to the west shore of Seneca Lake. This group included a number of leading Society members such as Abel Botsford, John Briggs, Benjamin Brown Sr., and Jedediah Holmes. They decided to break ground on their New Jerusalem near a waterfall on the stream that flowed from Crooked Lake down to Seneca Lake. The location, which was on a rise of land about a mile west of Seneca Lake, became known as City Hill. Though this initial group was all male, six more Friends, including three women, soon joined them. These female pioneers were Abigail and Sarah Brown, both daughters of Benjamin Brown, and Elizabeth Holmes. Besides building some rough cabins for shelter, the pioneers prepared twelve acres of land for planting and put in a crop of wheat.27 As was the case across the backcountry, the Universal Friends initiated the process of settlement by clearing the forest. There were two techniques used to accomplish this. Sometimes settlers simply “girdled” trees. That is, they cut away a deep band of bark which eventually caused them to die where they stood. Even before being removed, the dead, leafless trees let in enough light for settlers to plant crops in their midst. The alternative to girdling trees was cutting them down. This approach was faster but more labor intensive and appears to have become the preferred one among New Englanders by the mid-eighteenth century. Instead of creating open fields, the early stages of settlement produced an unkempt landscape. While journeying through western New York in the 1820s, the English traveler Basil Hall came across pioneer farms “covered with an inextricable and confused mass of prostrate trunks, branches and trees, piles of split logs, and of squared timbers, planks, shingles, great stacks of fuel.” He noted that fields were scattered with “numerous ugly stumps of old trees” and the “scorched and withered remnants of the ancient woods.” The stumps and timber that littered the ground made the creation of orderly, plowed fields impossible. Instead, settlers broke the ground with hoes and planted their grains broadcast. Livestock were also an important component of frontier farming. Cattle and pigs were popular with settlers because they provided food and, in the case of oxen, animal power. A labor-saving strategy distinguished stock-raising in the backcountry: instead of taking the effort to clear pastures and fence in their animals, pioneers turned them loose to browse in the forest.28 Several letters exchanged between James Parker and the Public Universal Friend late in the summer of 1788 give some sense of the state of affairs in what soon became known as the Friend’s Settlement. In addition to facing hard work, pioneers in central and western New York also suffered from the “Genesee Fever,” a malarialike illness that plagued many early settlers. James Parker was one of those laid low with the sickness. His condition

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was so serious that Sarah Richards traveled north from Worcester in June to nurse Parker, who she found “sick but not beyond hope.” She only returned to Pennsylvania in September after her patient had recovered.29 In a letter dated September 2, the prophet recalled that he had “hasten’d & sent Sarah [Richards] to thee at the time of thy severe sickness” and expressed that he was “glad to here of thy recovery.” The Friend must have heard the news from Sarah herself, for he also mentioned that “Sarah gives a good account of that new Country.” The Comforter went on to state, “If you have found a good Country where you can live together & desire me to come & dwell with you I must tell you upon what conditions I am willing to come.” He then specified that there had to be enough land to support all of her followers and that “none but friends [should] hold any title or possession there.” The prophet was very emphatic on this latter point, explaining that he was “determined not to dwell with revilers for I am weary of them that hate peace.” The Friend closed the letter with this postscript: “And as to those that are there who in their hearts are turn’d & turning back again into egypt that will not obey the truth let them depart & that forever.” These words allude to the fact that Sarah Richards found that not all was well at the Society’s frontier colony. A letter sent by Parker to the Friend on September 17 confirms this. Much of it concerned the problems Parker was having with his companions. He described John Briggs as “week & darkened tho intending well” and Thomas Sherman as “a poor odd creature.” As for Stephen Card, he was “in actual & open rebellion” and John Reynolds “very near that.” Parker summed up, “As to the state of those called friends here. It is pretty much as it was when she [Sarah Richards] was here” and then added, “I think I can say I rejoice in hope there will be a day of judgment.” Parker never clearly articulated just why things turned sour among the band of pioneers—it is possible that a combination of fatigue, sickness, and isolation (and perhaps poor leadership) put them all on edge.30 The spring of 1789 brought both new settlers and new challenges to the Universal Friends’ backwoods enclave. Society members from New England and Pennsylvania began to arrive, bolstering the population of the Friend’s Settlement. Ashel Stone along with his wife, Anna, and their children came from New Milford. Likewise, Mary Gardener arrived with her three children after making the trip from Rhode Island. This influx, in itself, posed a problem. In frontier regions recently opened to settlement it was easy for the rate of population growth to exceed that of food production. In effect, pioneers could occupy land at a much faster pace than they could turn it into productive farms. The end result was food scarcity and hunger. This was just the situation the Universal Friends faced in 1789. Castle Dains and

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his family numbered among the prophet’s disciples who ventured west that year, and food ran so short that they had to live on milk and boiled nettles for six weeks. Dains’s elder brother, Johnathan, and his family faced similar straits. He ultimately went to Newtown, New York, where he worked till he earned enough money to purchase two bushels of wheat, which he had milled at Tioga Point, Pennsylvania, and then carried back to City Hill.31 This shortage of provisions was not limited to the Friend’s Settlement but widespread across the Northeast. In addition to rapid population growth, several other factors created the region’s food crisis. Cool, damp weather and the dramatic spread of the Hessian fly, a wheat parasite, caused harvests to fail in 1788 and left granaries bare by 1789. This drop in food supplies, in turn, drove up prices and encouraged hoarding, making it even harder for people to obtain sustenance. At Tioga Point, inhabitants pinched by hunger rioted against merchants they claimed were hoarding grain and took it by force. Throughout central and western New York, both Indians and white settlers went hungry. The situation became so dire that the state government intervened and provided food relief to frontier inhabitants. The Universal Friends did manage to put in a crop of corn and planted forty acres of wheat by joint effort in the summer of 1789. James Parker, Richard Smith, and Abraham Dayton also erected a grist mill in 1790—the first one in operation in New York west of Ft. Stanwix. Together, these developments ended the settlement’s subsistence problems.32 A critical step in the rise of the Society’s frontier community was the arrival of the Universal Friend. For almost two years after its founding, the prophet’s followers had labored without the presence of their leader. In the spring of 1789, the Comforter did make an attempt to travel to New York from Worcester, but it almost ended in disaster. Several days into their journey, the Friend and his entourage attempted to cross a rain-swollen Bushkill Creek north of Bethlehem. The prophet and a companion, Mehitable Smith, were in a coach driven by Barnabas Brown. The creek proved to be too deep, the coach flooded, and the Friend and Smith almost drowned. Soaked and shaken, the prophet beat a hasty retreat back to Worcester. The holy messenger made a second (and successful) effort to reach his sect’s frontier colony the following year. The prophet, Sarah Richards, and several other converts left Worcester on March 13, and though both the Friend and Sarah Richards were ill during much of the journey, they managed to make it to their destination exactly one month later.33 Sarah Richards, who was, as always, hard at work as the prophet’s secondin-command, left the Friend’s Settlement a month later and traveled back to Worcester to help wrap up the Society’s affairs there. In a letter from

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Worcester dated May 23, 1790, Sarah reported that she “found Barnabus [Brown] severely sick and Rachel [Malin] laboring under symtoms of some terrible disorder.” She treated Rachel by bleeding her and did the same to Mehitable Smith when she was “violently taken sick the next day.” She also discussed her efforts to sell the sect’s property in Pennsylvania and make arrangements for sending on their livestock from Worcester to New York. By the summer of 1790, the Friend wanted Sarah back by her side. In a July 5 letter, James Parker wrote to Richards, informing her that “the Friend directs me to write to thee desiring thee to come here as soon as thee possibly can consistent with thy temporal business.” In the end, it took just over a year for Sarah Richards to finish her work in Pennsylvania and make her way back to the Friend’s Settlement. On June 1, 1791, Sarah arrived there along with Rachel and Elijah Malin, Mehitable Smith, and others. This marked the end of Richards’s travels, and she lived out the remainder of her days at the prophet’s side in New York.34 Joined by their spiritual guide, the Universal Friends continued their efforts at community building. By the summer after the prophet’s arrival, the Society had cut a rough road up from the west shore of Seneca Lake

Figure 5. The Friends’ log meetinghouse. From Stafford Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County. Drawn by Obedience Fraser Cleveland based on a description by Henry Barnes and engraved by Olive Fraser Ingalls.

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to their improvements at City Hill and built grist and saw mills at the falls along Outlet Creek. They finished the grist mill on July 4, 1790, and on July 5 Richard Smith made the following note in his Bible: “I have this day ground ten bushels of wheat, the same having been raised in the immediate neighborhood last year.” In addition to the mills, the sect completed other buildings vital to community life, including a log meetinghouse about thirty feet square, with a preaching platform across one end and a fireplace for heat. Henry Barnes, who was born and raised in the Friend’s frontier community, later reminisced about the rustic structure, recalling how during one summer meeting “a heavy thunder shower arose, the rain come down like a flood and the room leaked badly. Some of the women held a blanket or shawl over the Friend for protection, while she continued her discourse.” Despite its shortcomings, the building served a variety of purposes: it housed the sect’s worship services, became the meeting site of the Society’s trustees, and functioned as a schoolhouse where Sarah Richards and Ruth Pritchard educated the settlement’s children. Another vital structure was the Universal Friend’s residence (the first of three he would inhabit in New York) which stood on the new road between Seneca Lake and City Hill. While the pioneer homes of the rest of the settlement’s inhabitants were, like the meetinghouse, invariably constructed of logs, the prophet’s dwelling was reputed to be the first

Figure 6. The Universal Friend’s first home in New York. From Stafford Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County. Drawn by Obedience Fraser Cleveland and engraved by Olive Fraser Ingalls.

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frame house in New York west of Seneca Lake. Built by carpenter and sect member Elijah Malin, it stood two stories high, had a gambrel roof, and a central brick chimney with nine fireplaces.35 Migrants who endured the hardships of the pioneer phase of settlement usually saw their prospects improve with the passage of time. The investment of labor steadily transformed raw frontier freeholds into productive farms. A season or two after they seated themselves on the land, migrants began preparing the ground for more intensive use. They burned whatever logs and brush remained from their initial clearing efforts and laboriously pulled the charred remains of stumps from their fields. Eventually, the plow replaced the hoe as the settlers’ main agricultural implement. Frontier farmers also planted orchards and, with time, the fruit they bore joined the yield of their fields and gardens. They also cleared meadows that allowed them to harvest and store fodder for the winter months, eliminating the need to let livestock range in the woods. Finally, established settlers replaced rude pioneer cabins and lean-tos with more substantial, framed houses and outbuildings.36 By 1790 about 260 people inhabited the Friend’s Settlement, making it the largest non-Native community in western New York at the time and home to almost a fifth of the region’s white inhabitants. The Society’s frontier enclave, despite troubles with obtaining clear title to the land, quickly emerged as a thriving settlement with a growing population. Land agent of the Pulteney Associates Charles Williamson said as much when he described it as “a very industrious community who have already made considerable improvements, having completed an excellent grist and saw mill.” His glowing portrayal continued, “There are 80 families in it, each has a fine farm, and they are a quiet, moral, industrious people” who, he predicted, “will be double their present number before a twelvemonth.” John Lincklaen, another land agent in the employ of speculators, visited the Universal Friends’ colony in the summer of 1791. He did not have much good to say about the prophet’s religious doctrine, and, after attending one of the sect’s meetings for worship, remarked, “I sought, but in vain, to find some principles on which she founds her religion, but her sermon was only a quantity of vain words without sense or reason.” Lincklaen was more evenhanded about the settlement’s prospects, noting that the Society had already seated “378 souls in 60 families” on their claim.37

Jerusalem In spite of this progress at the Friend’s Settlement, the prophet did not remain there for long. In 1794 the holy messenger led a number of disciples on one final move, occupying land to the west of the City Hill site. This new

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location in the seventh town of the second range of the Massachusetts’s Preemption soon became known as Jerusalem. The reason why the Friend took this step was related to the property disputes that troubled the Society’s original settlement. A major factor in the Comforter’s decision to relocate was the growing realization that some of his most prominent followers—namely Judge William Potter and James Parker—were willing to renege on promises to fellow Society members and defy the will of the prophet in order to satisfy their own desires. As the Friend had told Parker in 1788, he would not dwell with “Rebels & Traitors & whatsoever loveth & maketh a lie.” Jerusalem, then, was not only to serve as a spiritual sanctuary from the outside world but also as an escape from grasping, disloyal members of the Society. The prophet recruited inhabitants for the new settlement from among disciples who fell victim to Parker and Potter’s land schemes. Sarah Richards commented on these efforts in a letter she sent to Ruth Pritchard in which she asked her to leave the Friend’s Settlement and join the holy messenger. She stated that the new community would assure that “the Friend will have a home, and likewise for the poor friends, and such as have no helper.”38 How Jerusalem came to be is a story that begins with the Universal Friends’ earliest negotiations for land in New York. As James Parker brokered a purchase with the Lessees, Thomas Hathaway Sr., Benedict Robinson, and other prominent members of the Society were also attempting to strike a deal with Phelps and Gorham for land in the Massachusetts’s Preemption. In 1789 Hathaway and Robinson obtained a share in the Phelps and Gorham purchase which entitled them to two six-by-six mile townships—one which they chose and a second selected at random. The second town the two men drew was at Big Tree (present-day Geneseo) on the very western margin of Phelps and Gorham’s purchase from the Haudenosaunee. The Universal Friend, however, was not happy with the thought of his disciples possessing land outside of the area targeted for their settlement and had Hathaway and Robinson sell the township. The other tract the two men selected, the seventh town of the second range, became Jerusalem. Hathaway and Robinson visited this land in December 1789, and Benedict reported what they found to Sarah Richards. He explained that he and Hathaway explored the township for two days and came away “satisfied with our purchase,” finding that “the timber exceeds any I have ever seen in this or any other country.” Equally important, he made note of “a small but beautiful shared meadow where 20 tons of good hay might be made now.” In a land covered in trees where almost every acre had to be painstakingly cleared, a natural meadow such as this was a valuable piece of real estate. Alluding to an earlier conversation with the prophet, Robinson continued, “Would the Friend accept the

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offer of such a piece as I have mentioned in thy hearing.” It is clear from all this that plans to provide the Public Universal Friend with lands outside of Parker’s purchase dated from at least 1789.39 Several prominent members of the Friend’s sect eventually secured claim to a large portion of Jerusalem. In the summer of 1790, Hathaway and Robinson hired surveyor Daniel Guernsey to divide the town into seventy-two lots of 320 acres. When this was complete, the two men made a down payment on their purchase, and Oliver Phelps conveyed a deed for the tract to them on September 2. After a couple of years it became clear to Hathaway and Robinson that they would not be able to pay for the full township, and so they conveyed a portion of it back to Phelps and Gorham. Later, Hathaway and Robinson turned over most of their interest in the town to their fellow Society member, William Carter. Carter, who faced the same problems in paying for the land as its previous owners, conveyed several thousand additional acres in the town back to the proprietors of the Massachusetts’s Preemption. So, by the summer of 1795, associates of the Universal Friend held just over twelve thousand acres in the northern and eastern sections of the town.40 Unlike the Friend’s Settlement, where the prophet held no land, the holy messenger eventually acquired a large tract in Jerusalem. As early as July 1791, the Friend, with Sarah Richards acting as his agent and trustee (the prophet refused to use his legal name in order to conduct business or to sully himself with such worldly matters), began to make payments to Robinson and Hathaway for land in the town. On January 5, 1792, Robinson conveyed to Richards fourteen-hundred acres in Jerusalem. On May 7 of the following year, Hathaway also deeded land in the town to Richards on behalf of the Friend. Less than a month later, he issued a second deed to Richards for another lot. In July 1794 the prophet purchased an additional four-hundred acres from Hathaway for £100. This pattern of land acquisition continued into 1795. In that year Richards obtained two other lots that had been willed to the Friend by Asa Richards. A document drawn up by William Carter on August 14, 1795, confirming the prophet’s earlier purchases, shows that he eventually held fourteen lots in Jerusalem containing 4,480 acres. Thus God’s holy messenger acquired an earthly kingdom to complement the heavenly one he promised his followers.41 The creation of Jerusalem was a triumph for the Universal Friend, but one tinged with tragedy. In founding the new settlement, the prophet appeared to have achieved what he had long sought: the establishment of a community of true believers on a tract of land with a secure title. The deaths of some of the prophet’s most longstanding and loyal disciples, however, marred this

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accomplishment. In March 1793, Mehitable Smith, who had been with the Friend since the early days of his ministry, died at the age of forty-six after a three-month illness. The Society’s Death Book records that she “gladly resigned her Breath Saying in her last moments, O! How I love my Lord; He is all and in all to my Soul.” Three days after her passing, the Comforter preached at Mehitable’s funeral. His text was Isaiah 57:1: “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.”42 An even more devastating blow fell on the Friend when his long-time confidant and chief lieutenant, Sarah Richards, died. She had long been plagued by extended periods of poor health, and her numerous travels on behalf of the prophet did not help matters. Richards had been at the forefront of efforts to settle Jerusalem, and it seems that these labors took their toll. She became sick in July 1793 and suffered through a lingering illness till she died on November 30, a Sabbath day, at the age of thirty-six. The entry in the Society’s Death Book for Sarah states, “At Eve 7 on the clock She Expired! And left Her weeping friends to mourn for themselves!” The prophet presided over Richards’s funeral on December 4 and “Preach’d a very great Sermon.” As with Mehitable Smith’s funeral, he chose Isaiah 57:1 for his text, advising that it was “better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to heart.” The Friend and his followers did their best to fill the gap that Sarah’s death left in the Society. Ruth Pritchard took over as the prophet’s secretary and the sect’s scribe. Rachel Malin, a young, single woman of Quaker background from Philadelphia who lived with her sister Margaret in the Friend’s household, took over the position of trustee for the prophet’s property.43 After the loss of Sarah Richards, the Universal Friend went forward with his plans to settle Jerusalem. On February 20, 1794, Ruth Pritchard made a brief entry in her journal—“20th of the 2d Mo 1794 the Dear Universal FRIEND Move from this Settlement”—marking the Comforter’s departure from City Hill. The prophet’s new residence in Jerusalem was about a mile south of the town’s north boundary and just to the west of a stream which the Universal Friends named Brook Kedron after the biblical stream that flowed between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. In 1793 members of the Society cleared ten to twelve acres on the site and, by 1794, had constructed a substantial log home for the prophet. Eventually, the Friend’s disciples added two log additions to each side of the structure. Later still, the Society added a second story to the eastern wing and covered it with clapboard siding. A traveler who visited the Universal Friend in 1795 commented that even though his house was “built only of the trunks of trees,” he found it “extremely

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Figure 7. The Universal Friend’s second home in New York. From Stafford Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County. Drawn by Obedience Fraser Cleveland based on a description by Henry Barnes and engraved by Olive Fraser Ingalls.

pretty and commodious.” Just to the north of the house was a road that ran from Jerusalem covering the ten-odd miles between it and the City Hill settlement.44 The Friend’s dwelling was at the center of a cluster of buildings that served his large household, including several log barns, a workshop where women in the Friend’s household spun and wove, and a springhouse. Occupying these buildings were between sixteen and eighteen people, most of whom were single women who followed the Comforter’s practice of celibacy. Among them were the prophet’s newly promoted lieutenant, Rachel Malin, and her sister, Margaret, as well as the two women’s brothers, Elijah and Enoch. Like their sisters, these two young men were Quakers from Philadelphia who had been disowned by the Society of Friends as punishment for following the Friend. In addition, Chloe Towerhill, a former slave, served as cook while Mary Bean was in charge of the dairy. The youngest member of the household was Sarah Richards’s orphaned daughter, Eliza. Though the Friend treated Eliza as if she were his own flesh and blood, the girl would be the source of trouble for the prophet in the years to come.45 Even though the Universal Friend had established a new home at Jerusalem, this does not mean that he cut ties with loyal followers who remained at the older settlement. Anna Wagener, a devout member of the Society who owned a farm at City Hill, always kept a room ready for the Comforter’s use. The prophet frequently made the trip to the Friend’s Settlement to

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hold Sabbath meetings at its log meeting house. Indeed, not long after Ruth Pritchard recorded the Friend’s move to Jerusalem, she made note of one of these visits: “2d of the 3d Mo Sabath Day, at Eve. The Friend came” and “12th of the 4th Mo. The Dear Friend is Come.”46 Of course, the Universal Friend and his household did not establish Jerusalem on their own, and dozens of other Society members joined them and established their own farms in the new settlement. Among the first comers were Daniel and Anna Brown, who hailed from Stonington, Connecticut, along with their sons Daniel, George, and Russell. They took up land in the town, built a log house, and started the process of clearing the land. In addition to the Browns, members of the Botsford, Comstock, Holmes, Barnes, Ingraham, Davis, and Dains families pioneered Jerusalem. In some cases, the Friend provided land for his followers out of his sizable holdings in the town. In this way the prophet surrounded himself with loyal adherents, many of whom were poorer members of the Society who had been squeezed out of the City Hill settlement. For example, the Friend gave 160 acres to Ezekiel and Mary Shearman. Ezekiel had explored the Genesee country for the Society in 1786, and in 1790 he married Mary Bartleson, the widowed sister of John Supplee, who had followed the Friend north from Pennsylvania. Besides the tract they obtained from the prophet, David Wagener deeded the couple 150 acres, giving them a 310-acre homestead. Ezekiel had only been able to obtain fifty acres at the City Hill settlement, so the move to Jerusalem offered both spiritual and material rewards. Many single or widowed women—Martha Reynolds, Lucina Goodspeed, and Marcy Aldrich to name a few—also relocated to the new settlement. Some took up residence in the Friend’s household, while others established farms on land either provided to them by the Comforter or purchased with their own funds.47 Like the older colony at City Hill, Jerusalem became a thriving frontier settlement where the disciples of the Universal Friend divided their time between achieving salvation and the more earthly labors of building farms and a community. The Public Universal Friend believed that the frontier offered a place where he and his followers could practice their creed and await the Second Coming in peace. He could not have been more wrong. Rather than a pristine Eden, America’s revolutionary-era backcountry was a site of conflict where Indians, white settlers, land speculators, and governments battled over property and power. The New York frontier saw its fair share of such struggles, and with their decision to establish a New Jerusalem there, the prophet and his disciples found themselves caught up in a contentious tangle of land disputes that resulted in dashed hopes and bitter divisions.

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Though they certainly paid a price in terms of wasted money and hard feelings, the Universal Friends seemed to weather all the challenges the frontier threw at them. The prophet eventually obtained enough land in Jerusalem to establish a community of loyal followers and seemingly set the stage whereby the Society could turn its back on the confusion and duplicity that had marred its colony at City Hill. In addition, the Universal Friends faced the back-breaking labor of settlement and proved themselves equal to the task of transforming forests into orderly farms. The Society also started down the path of knitting these homesteads together by establishing the essential infrastructure of community life such as roads, a meetinghouse, and a school. On the surface, what the group accomplished mirrored a process of community building that took place across the revolutionary frontier and placed them solidly in the mainstream of American social life. Considered more closely, however, life in their sectarian enclave clearly distinguished them from other Americans and put them at odds with accepted gender norms.

Ch a p ter 6

Acts And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. —Acts 2: 18

While traveling from Philadelphia in June 1795 to see the natural wonder Niagara Falls, the Duc de La RochefoucauldLiancourt made a brief detour to visit an allegedly supernatural wonder, the Public Universal Friend. One of many French noblemen living in exile and touring the United States in the wake of the French Revolution, Liancourt, accompanied by ten companions, arrived at Jerusalem on a Saturday, the Society of Universal Friends’ day of worship, and attended services led by the prophet and held in his home. In his journal he later wrote, “We found there about thirty persons, men, women, and children. Jemima stood at the door of her bedchamber on a carpet.” Reflecting on the Friend’s sermon, Liancourt noted that “she preached with more ease, than any other Quaker, I have yet heard; but the subject matter of her discourse was an eternal repetition of the same topics, death, sin, and repentance.” After the meeting was over, the aristocrat and his entourage joined the Comforter and his disciples for dinner. If they hoped to use the occasion to take the measure of their host, then they were disappointed. As Liancourt later explained, “It forms a part of the character she acts, never to eat with any one.” The Friend left them, “locking herself up with her female friend [Rachel Malin]” to dine, and no one else ate until they had finished. The “excellent” meal the visitors eventually received, consisting of “good fresh meat, with pudding, an excellent salad, and a beverage of a peculiar yet charming flavor,” tempered the Frenchman’s 140

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Figure 8. Gift from Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt to the Universal Friend. Photograph by author. Wilkinson Collection, Courtesy of the Yates County History Center, Penn Yan, NY.

disappointment. Yet even mealtime did not afford an opportunity to gain much intelligence, for he also noted that the Friend’s adherents ate in complete silence, “not unlike a party of the faithful, in the primitive ages, dining in a church.”1 Despite the hospitality he received, Liancourt’s assessment of the Universal Friend was overwhelmingly negative. He asserted that the prophet’s “hypocrisy may be traced in all her discourses, actions, and conduct, and even in the very manner in which she manages her countenance.” After a postdinner

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conversation, during which the Friend spoke in what Liancourt described as a “sanctimonious, mystic tone,” he took his leave.2 It is not entirely clear what alienated the nobleman, but it seems that the source of the offense was social rather than religious. There was nothing about the Comforter’s doctrine that appears to have disturbed Liancourt; indeed, he devoted more attention to describing his dinner than to the prophet’s sermon. Instead, what likely set the Frenchman against Wilkinson was what he perceived as her challenge to the social order. In his eyes, she was a woman who upended gender norms through her assumption of spiritual and domestic authority. She played the role, not only of a prophet, but of a patriarch who gathered his household round his table. Liancourt was also needled by Wilkinson’s disregard for markers of rank and class; here he was, a man and an aristocrat, who had to wait until the daughter of a Rhode Island farmer finished eating before he could do so, in much the same way that servants ate only after their master had dined. Objections to the Universal Friend and his adherents often focused on how they translated their convictions into practice. It was not their religious observances that upset critics like Liancourt so much as the way the prophet and his followers conducted themselves. What especially rubbed them the wrong way was how the sect transgressed hierarchies rooted in gender and rank. The Society’s New Jerusalem was not just a spiritual retreat but also a social crucible where they forged a new, sanctified way of life. Through a variety of acts, such as establishing households and building families, the Universal Friends created a domestic order that diverged from mainstream society in subtle but significant ways. Moreover, in managing their spiritual and earthly affairs, they constructed male and female roles at odds with traditional gender norms. Thus it is only possible to fully comprehend the social implications of the Friend’s ministry by examining how converts acted on his gospel, and the best place to examine this intersection of faith and daily life is in the sectarian community they built on the New York frontier.3

Domestic Order As they bought and battled over property, cleared forests, built farms, and constructed mills, the Universal Friends pursued a course of action that closely matched the behavior of people across the early American frontier. Intertwined with this economic process was a social one in which migrants established community networks. More often than not, settlers moved to the backcountry in the company of family and neighbors. Thus, instead of lacking close interpersonal ties, pioneer settlements often possessed them from

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their inception. Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt commented on this very point while on his tour of western New York. He noted that he met several groups of people going to the Genesee country whose “friendly connections also are mostly confined to their own families, which move about with them.” Once planted, backwoods neighborhoods quickly developed dense interpersonal networks that connected households to one another. The deepening of kin ties was an important aspect of this process, and to whatever bonds of blood and marriage migrants brought with them, they quickly added new ones. Such was certainly the case with the Universal Friends. Most of the Friend’s followers joined the sect in the company of kin and family and rapidly intermarried with other families in the Society. Gathered together in their frontier enclave, this process intensified. For example, Rebecca Scott, a widow, came to the Friend’s Settlement in 1790 along with her daughters, Orpha and Margaret. Once there, Margaret married Elijah Botsford, the son of Jonathan Botsford. John Supplee, a Society member from Pennsylvania, arrived in New York and married Jonathan Botsford’s daughter, Achsa. The Botsford family forged yet another kin tie within the sect when Thomas Hathaway Jr. married Mary Botsford, the daughter of Elnathan Botsford. Likewise, Benedict Robinson married Susannah Brown a daughter of the prominent Universal Friend Daniel Brown.4 Although the ties the Universal Friends established between households did not distinguish them from other backcountry settlers, the domestic order they put into practice within them did. Contemporary accounts and early histories of Jerusalem depict it as a place where traditional social institutions such as marriage and the patriarchal household came under threat. William Savery, a Quaker gentleman who paid a visit to the Comforter in 1794, contributed to this picture of social (and specifically gender) deviance. Savery characterized the Society of Universal Friends as being composed of “women who have forsaken husbands and children; and also of men who have left their families.” Not only had the prophet’s followers abandoned their responsibilities as spouses and parents, according to Savery, their daily lives flew in the face of proper roles for men and women. He bristled at what he saw as Jemima Wilkinson’s shameful usurpation of patriarchal authority and predicted that her last days would “be spent in contempt, unless her heart becomes humbled and contrite” or, put another way, unless she learned to accept her subordinate station as a woman. In addition, he lamented that the Friend’s male disciples had lost their manhood and merely become “hewers of wood and drawers of water to an artful and designing woman” and that her female followers, like Rachel Malin, had taken to wearing “masculine” items of dress. In a similar vein, Orasmus Turner, in his The History of the

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Phelps and Gorham Purchase, claims that, though the Friend did not require married couples who joined the sect to separate, “they were forbidden to multiply.” Thus Turner implies that an enforced celibacy undermined one of the basic functions of the family: having and raising children.5 Though it did not challenge social norms as sharply as some critics suggested, the domestic order the Universal Friends constructed in their New Jerusalem did separate them from the mainstream in significant ways. The most striking feature of the sect’s community was its high proportion of female-led families. According to the 1800 census, out of sixty-five households in Ontario County’s district of Jerusalem (which included all of the Society’s various settlements) affiliated with the sect, women headed thirteen, or 20 percent, of them. In contrast, none of the other 164 households had a female head. Looking beyond the district only confirms the Universal Friends’ divergence from the norm. In Seneca Township, which was just to the north of Jerusalem, there were 267 households and only 11 of them (4 percent) were female led. Similarly, in the township of Phelps, which bordered Seneca, women headed only 2 of its 209 households.6 The prevalence of female domestic leadership in the Society’s frontier enclave was a product of its inhabitants’ religious allegiance. Women who headed families were not evenly spread across the sect’s settlements. The majority (eight of thirteen) were clustered around the Universal Friend’s residence in Jerusalem, suggesting a link between female-led households and devotion to the prophet. In addition, most of them appear to have been widows. Women who lost their husbands took on the role of household head until they remarried. For many widows in the Society, however, the promotion to household head was a permanent one. Sarah Clark, Elizabeth Ovett, Elizabeth Kinney, and Rebecca Scott were such women; they all came to New York as widows and stayed that way for the remainder of their lives. Whether these women stayed single because of a lack of opportunity to remarry or because they made a conscious choice to follow the Friend’s example and live a celibate life is difficult to determine, but the latter explanation is a distinct possibility. Widowhood, however, does not account for all of the female household heads among the Universal Friends. In several cases, women in the Society left their husbands behind when they went to New York and lived as single women, again highlighting the relationship between religion and domestic life. Mary Gardener, for example, left her spouse in North Kingston, Rhode Island, when she made the trek to the New York frontier along with her three children. Finally, some women in the sect, following their leader’s example, simply never married.7

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Besides the high proportion of female-led households among the Universal Friends, that several adult men belonged to them is noteworthy. Seven men who were over twenty-five years old lived in families headed by women. Three of them resided with the Universal Friend and the other four were in households headed by Sarah Briggs and Susannah Clamford. In a maledominated society in which men were supposed to have dominion over property and women, this situation, though limited, is significant. Six of the men were between the ages of twenty-six and forty-five. It is possible that all of these individuals were at the bottom end of this age range. It was not uncommon for white men during this era to be in their mid to late twenties before marrying, obtaining property, and taking their place in the ranks of independent householders. Nevertheless, a man who was twenty-six living in a home without any older adult male would have by default assumed the position as head of household under normal circumstances. The seventh man, who lived in the Friend’s home, was forty-five or older and may have been elderly, incapacitated, or otherwise unable to exercise domestic authority; otherwise, his position in the household is equally curious. It is important to keep in mind that, from the perspective of the Universal Friends, the three men who lived in the prophet’s household were not under the authority of a woman because they did not think that their leader was a woman. Nevertheless, this still leaves the four adult men who lived with Sarah Briggs and Susannah Clamford. It is also highly unlikely that these men were merely servants unrelated to people they resided with, for the sect did not employ outsiders and depended on family members to fulfill its labor needs.8 Comparing the Society’s female-led households with those in Seneca and Phelps townships helps to bring into focus how the Universal Friends’ domestic arrangements pushed the margins of the gendered status quo. The two townships’ thirteen woman-headed households only contained three men who were above twenty-five years of age. Two of them were over the age of forty-five and possibly aged and infirm. This leaves one man who was between the age of twenty-six and forty-five, in his prime, and a logical candidate for head of household. Why he did not play this role is unclear, but it is possible that he was merely a hired hand. The point here is that, placed in this context, the Society Universal Friends possessed an unusual proportion of adult men who lived under the domestic authority of women.9 Another significant feature of the Universal Friends’ domestic order was the small size of their households. The average household size among the prophet’s followers was about four persons. This is noticeably smaller than the average of close to six persons for households in the district of Jerusalem not connected to the sect. It is also smaller than the national mean of just

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over five persons per household in 1790.10 The smaller size of the Society’s households does not seem to be a product of frontier life, for their nonsectarian neighbors (who came from similar places of origin and settled in New York around the same time) supported much larger ones. What made the Society’s households smaller was a lack of children.11 Among the families affiliated with the Universal Friend, there were 141 individuals between the ages of one and twenty-six, for an average of just over two per household. In comparison, there were, on average, four persons in this age bracket among nonsectarian households in the district of Jerusalem. In other words, the families in the prophet’s sect had only around half the number of young people as those outside of it. This gap becomes even more striking when just looking at children and young people between the ages of one and sixteen. Households linked to the Society contained an average of one member in this age range. In contrast, those not belonging to the sect held an average of three.12 In addition, genealogical information, though incomplete, demonstrates that married couples in the Society only produced about four children each. This was far fewer than the national norm. In 1800, for example, American couples bore an average of seven children— almost twice as many as those among the prophet’s adherents.13 The Universal Friends’ faith explains why they had fewer children than most Americans. Dividing the Comforter’s followers into two groups—firstgeneration disciples who were married and began the process of having children before they attached themselves to the prophet and second-generation followers who came of age and entered into the process of building a family after joining the sect—highlights the connection between childbearing and religious outlook. The former group averaged about five children per couple and the latter, not even three. The first-generation had more children because they had begun (and sometimes completed) the process of bearing children long before they encountered the Friend and his advocacy of celibacy. For example, Judge William Potter’s wife, Penelope, had already bore him thirteen children before he met the Universal Friend. It is also worth noting that the average number of children born to first-generation couples closely matches the average among Quaker parents during the second half of the eighteenth century. This makes sense in light of the fact that many of the Comforter’s converts were former Quakers and again highlights the links between religious affiliation and family life. In contrast, second-generation Universal Friends who married produced fewer children because the prophet’s message shaped their married life from the start. Judge Potter’s daughter, Penelope, and Benjamin Brown Jr. formed one of these unions. Their marriage, which evolved under the guidance of their celibate spiritual leader, produced only one child.14

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Contemporaries accused the Universal Friend and his disciples of undermining gender norms in their frontier enclave by turning their backs on the institution of marriage. Several accounts assert that the Friend not only upheld the spiritual merits of celibacy but took steps to discourage marriage among his converts. One story has it that when Thomas Hathaway Jr. and Mary Botsford got married in 1793, the prophet was so incensed that he “excommunicated” both from the Society and forbade them to even set foot in his meetings. A similar tale exists about the marriage of Benedict Robinson to Susannah Brown. Susannah lived near Benedict and acted as the bachelor’s housekeeper for several years. According to local lore, Thomas Hathaway came to visit Benedict one morning in 1792 and found the Pulteney Associates’ agent, Charles Williamson, there. Williamson informed Hathaway that Benedict was ill, and when Thomas went upstairs to check on his friend, he found him in bed with Susannah Brown! Williamson then revealed his joke, explaining that he, as a local justice of the peace, had just married the couple. The Universal Friend was not pleased by Robinson’s decision to marry and punished him for it.15 Other stories concerned unconventional living arrangements in the Friend’s community that threatened to undermine proper relations between men and women. For example, one of James and Elizabeth Parker’s daughters, Alice, resided with a bachelor, Thomas Prentiss, as his live-in housekeeper. Her parents felt that this situation was highly irregular to say the least. It was not just that Prentiss was a single man living with a single woman, but rumors circulated that he had left a wife back in New Jersey. James Parker responded to the situation by forcing Alice to marry a man by the name of Perley Gates. However, it appears that Gates was in love with another woman in the Society, Orpha Scott. Alice and Perley lived together but never consummated their marriage; instead, Alice bore a son to Thomas Prentiss. In a final turn to this strange tale, Alice all but admitted to her adultery, and Perley accepted his status as cuckold when they gave the child the last name of Prentiss.16 While stories about the Universal Friend’s opposition to marriage and his followers’ irregular living arrangements tend to exaggerate, the sect did engage in behaviors that placed them outside the mainstream. Most members of the Society were married when they joined it or became so afterward, and it also seems that these couples generally followed the roles prescribed for husbands and wives. However, the proportion of the prophet’s followers who remained single continued to distinguish the group from society at large. It appears that 14 percent of the Friend’s charter generation of converts never married. This figure differs significantly from the general population: in the

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eighteenth century, the number of Americans who never wed was small, probably under 5 percent.17 In sum, the sect did deviate from the norm when it came to marriage but did not present a radical challenge to the institution. The answer to why so many of the Universal Friend’s followers remained single again lies in high levels of religious devotion. Most of those who chose to remain unmarried were part of a clique of about four dozen committed female followers, later christened the “Faithful Sisterhood.” Of these women, twenty-six ( just over half ) never married, sixteen (about a third) were widows who never remarried, and only five were wed. Among this final group was Elizabeth Kenyon, who had left her husband behind when she came to New York and lived as a single woman. Thus while most converts participated in the Society without revolutionizing basic social norms, the prophet’s most dedicated adherents did eschew the institution of marriage and all that came with it.18 It is also clear that women decided to live a life outside of marriage far more often than men. There was, simply put, no male counterpart to the Faithful Sisterhood. However, a few devoted male disciples did take up a single life. Silas Spink, who came to the Friends’ frontier settlement in 1790 from Wickford, Rhode Island, remained a bachelor until he finally married in 1818 when he was about sixty years old. Likewise, William Turpin chose to remain single but, unlike Spink, remained so until his death.19 The roles men and women filled in the Society of Universal Friends also put them at odds with social norms. The gender division of labor in eighteenth-century America generally located women in their homes and neighborhoods and made them responsible for food preparation and preservation, housekeeping (including the managements of daughters and female servants), maintaining kitchen gardens, the production and exchange of domestic goods, the care of young children, and tending the sick. In contrast, men ideally devoted themselves to tasks that often took them outside of the home, such as the pursuit of a trade or profession, or outside their localities, such as politics, commerce, or military service. This separation of tasks was not absolute and men and women shared the same space and some of the same responsibilities: craftsmen just as often labored at home as in a separate shop, both men and women engaged in trade, and husbands and wives both took a hand in raising their children.20 The Universal Friends did not systematically challenge the status quo when it came to the gender division of labor but did, on occasion, transgress it. Women in the Society nursed babies, baked bread, did laundry, and cooked meals. For example, when Ruth Pritchard and other female disciples of the Friend stopped in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley while on their way to New York, they paid for their lodging by sewing and spinning. Meanwhile, it

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is clear that the prophet’s male adherents cleared the land, tended crops, practiced trades, and engaged in business ventures. Yet there were some exceptions to this pattern. The women who acted as trustees for the Universal Friend and managed his worldly affairs engaged in a range of “masculine” pursuits. Sarah Richards took part in numerous business transactions on behalf of the Friend. On June 7, 1791, for instance, she “reckon’d & Settled with Thos Osman the Boatman for bringing up the Friends goods, to his full Satisfaction” and on July 19 recorded, “This Day the Universal Friend sent me with Rachel Malin to Benedict Robinson to deliver one hundred Dollars in silver for which he promised and agreed with the Friend let the Friend have land out of the Second Seventh Township.” After Richards’s death in 1793, Rachel and Margaret Malin took over as the prophet’s agents. It is important to remember that these women were not acting as “deputy husbands.” In other words, they were not attending to such business merely because men were absent or incapacitated. Indeed, Richards and the Malin sisters were all single women. So, life in the Friends’ religious community moved at least some of its female inhabitants beyond the sorts of domestic tasks that usually circumscribed women’s lives.21 Besides this physical division of tasks, there was also what could be described as an emotional division of labor between men and women, and while it does not seem that the vast majority of Universal Friends significantly altered it, there were some notable exceptions. In terms of character, society expected men to be decisive, assertive patriarchs who oversaw the well-being of their wives, children, and other household dependents. As for women, ideally they were to be submissive, yielding, virtuous, and supportive subordinates.22 It appears that most members of the Society lived their lives adhering to these expectations as much as anybody did. However, a few did contravene them. Most obviously, Jemima Wilkinson shattered such prescriptions with her strange and strident bid for spiritual authority. Likewise, several of the Friend’s leading female converts, such as Sarah Richards, followed the prophet’s lead by asserting themselves in public and taking on leadership roles. There was also at least one male disciple who turned his back on social expectations and embraced several emotional traits construed by society as feminine. Latham Avery was one of several Universal Friends from Groton, Connecticut. On February 15, 1790, he wrote a letter explaining that, against his will, his daughter, Jerusha, intended to marry Roswell Burrows, son of the Reverend Silas Burrows. Latham listed several reasons why he did not want Jerusha to marry—at one point he complained that she was too young—but at the heart of the matter was a dispute over religious allegiance. Silas Burrows

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was a Baptist minister from Groton who had a history of confrontations with the Universal Friend. The prophet had won several converts from among Burrows’s flock, and the reverend responded by banishing at least two of them (Sarah Niles and Sarah Brown) from his church in the 1780s. Thus Latham faced the prospect of his daughter marrying the son of his spiritual leader’s avowed enemy. He also explained that Jerusha’s decision to marry destroyed whatever hopes he had of seeing her remain a devoted, and celibate, member of the Friend’s Society. What made matters even worse was that this was not just a case of a child disobeying her parents, for Latham’s wife, Susanna, who he described as “Exceeding Mallicious,” also opposed him. She not only supported Jerusha’s marriage to Roswell Burrows but resisted her husband’s plans to join the Universal Friend in New York. According to Latham, his wife went to the Selectmen of Groton and attempted to secure part of his estate for her and her children’s support in case he did move to the frontier. He concluded his lament by noting that sleeping in the same bed with his wife “was like going to a hornets nest in hot weather.”23 Latham Avery did not act the part of a dominant patriarch in this conflict with his wife and daughter. He did not attempt to put down this domestic rebellion by simply forbidding his daughter to marry, nor did he aggressively impose his authority over his wife. Instead, Latham’s response was a masterpiece of passive-aggressive behavior designed to induce guilt and remorse. He described how he suffered: many Days and Nights no food nor Sleep, hardly at all, Some Night when no rest nor quiet in my House go into my Barn and wrap me in the Straw till towards Day, then almost Chiled through go into the House and lay me self on the hearth with my great coat only about me, there to get some warmth. Sometimes go to the Nieghbors in order to tarry all Night, and obtain no Invitation to tarry, and so Return to my Barn again, under such weight of Distress as was insupportable had it not been for the special hand of my God—at sometimes Crying out O that I had never had a Child, and then O Lord lay no more on me than thou wilt I’m able to bare. Rather than assert his power as a husband and father, Latham wielded his angst as a weapon against his wife, daughter, and Silas Burrows. His strategy apparently worked, for eventually his wife agreed not to support the marriage and his daughter turned Roswell away.24 Latham Avery’s conduct is consistent with a wider pattern of genderbending behavior among male evangelical Christians during the late eighteenth century. Men drawn into the evangelical movement cast aside a

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number of practices traditionally coded as masculine, such as drinking, gambling, and physical aggression. Christian reformers perceived these behaviors as masculine vices, and so it is not too surprising that men who aimed to live upright, righteous lives rejected them. Yet there is also evidence that male evangelicals also set aside other more essential traits of manhood, such as the exercise of authority over the household’s domestic affairs and religious life. In sum, at least some men extended the evangelical outlook into social and institutional realms, drew back from patriarchal prerogatives, and shared power with women. This sort of spiritually inspired reconfiguration of masculine identity had roots that went far deeper than the Great Awakening. As far back as the mid seventeenth century, the Quakers had fashioned new gender roles that deemphasized patriarchal power and traditional notions of masculine prowess.25 The domestic order that the Universal Friends forged in their frontier enclave diverged from social norms in several respects. Female-led households were far more frequent than in the general population; married couples had fewer children than their nonsectarian counterparts; and especially within the prophet’s inner-circle of female adherents, a much higher proportion of sect members remained single than in society at large. All in all, life in the Friends’ community provided women with more opportunities to live independent of male authority.

Spiritual Authority The establishment of a community of the faithful in New York accelerated a shift in spiritual authority among the Universal Friends. Women increasingly dominated religious expression and leadership in the sect, while men took responsibility for managing its earthly affairs. Though the Universal Friend did not consider himself female, to those outside the sect who only saw a deluded or duplicitous Jemima Wilkinson, the prophet stood as a clear example of a woman who empowered herself by taking on a mantle of spiritual authority. The Society’s weekly Sabbath-day meetings most clearly manifested the Friend’s dominant position in the community. The prophet initiated worship by sitting quietly for a few minutes. Next, the holy messenger knelt and prayed for some time before again sitting down in silence. After this the prophet spoke, delivering a sermon that generally lasted from an hour to an hour and a half. Only after he had finished did others speak. The meeting ended with those in attendance shaking hands with the prophet and each other.26 The Friend was also a conspicuous figure at his converts’ deaths and funerals. Numerous entries in the Society’s Death

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Book describe the Friend governing over how followers “left time.” For example, the prophet attended Asa Richards “in his last moments; whome he looked upon when bath’d with the cold sweat of Death” and presided over his funeral where he preached on a text from Proverbs: “The wicked is driven away in his wickedness but the Righteous hath hope in his Death.” The Comforter further documented this role in a letter to Hannah Wall dated August 2, 1803. He wrote to inform Wall of the death of her son, recounting how he had conversed with him in the days before his death, helped prepare his body for burial, and officiated at his funeral.27 The authority the Universal Friend garnered as a spiritual leader extended beyond the meetinghouse and touched almost every aspect of life in his community. The prophet’s influence over day-to-day aspects of his followers’ lives was something that many observers took note of. In Enthusiastical Errors, Abner Brownell criticized the Friend’s disciples for asking his counsel on various nonreligious matters, recalling, for instance, that female adherents asked “how they shall have their cloaths made, and about making their cloth.” The prophet not only dispensed advice but also judgment. In keeping with their determination to shut out a sinful world, members of the Society turned to their leader, not the courts, to settle their differences and punish infractions. In particular, the Friend maintained discipline within the Society and acted against those who failed to follow his rules. In his memoirs, Thomas Morris wrote that Jemima Wilkinson’s “disciples placed the most unbounded confidence in her and yielded in all things, the most implicit obedience to her mandates. She would punish those among them, who were guilty of the slightest deviation from her orders.” He mentioned that “in some instances, she would order the offending culprit to wear a cow bell round his neck for weeks, or months, according to the nature of the offense.”28 There are a number of stories concerning the power the Friend allegedly wielded over his disciples and how it translated into their almost slavish acceptance of the prophet’s judgments and punishments, no matter how humiliating. An account tells that “one of the most dignified gentleman of her community actually submitted to have a little bell tinkling for the skirt of his coat for six weeks” in punishment for an unnamed offense. In a similar episode, one of the prophet’s followers had “to wear a black cap drawn over his hair and forehead on all public occasions for three months.” Though the subject of the story was never named, it is almost certainly Benedict Robinson. When he married without the prophet’s blessing, the Friend reportedly had him carry out the humiliating punishment of donning a type of cap worn by Quaker brides. According to Judge William Oliver, who later recalled the event in 1828, the Universal Friend and Sarah Richards personally placed the

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cap on Robinson’s head.29 Another source tells of the Friend ordering a female disciple to have her mouth sealed up with strips of paper because she laughed too much to suit the prophet’s notions of piety. A more precise account of the rulings the Comforter handed down explains that on one occasion Amos Gurnsey fell from a tree and broke his shoulder after climbing it in order to look into a second-floor women’s bedroom in the prophet’s house. He confessed his sin and in punishment had to wear a sheep’s bell for three weeks.30 The exact truth of these accounts, all of which were authored by people outside of the sect and frequently long after the alleged events they describe, is impossible to verify, and it is clear that those who presented them wished to illustrate that following the Friend came at the loss of personal dignity. Nevertheless, these stories demonstrate that there was concern over the prophet’s exercise of judicial power that was likely rooted in real events. The Universal Friend lived a life on the New York frontier that was more in keeping with the material comforts of the rural gentry than the asceticism of a holy person. The Comforter’s disciples took care of their leader’s earthly needs: they made his clothes, tended his gardens, cared for his livestock, and planted his fields.31 When the Friend moved to New York, they also built him a series of homes. The third was by far the largest and most elaborate. Work on the two-and-a-half story frame building, which stood atop a hill overlooking Crooked Lake, began in 1809, and the prophet took up residence in the spring of 1814. The first floor was bisected by a wide entry hall which had a dining room and parlor on one side and a library and meeting room on the other. The second floor contained several bedrooms, including one in the southeast corner with a view of the lake that became the Friend’s. Barns, sheds, a carriage house, burial vault, and formal garden surrounded the house and completed the image of a prosperous rural estate. In an age when architecture, like dress, denoted status, the prophet’s final residence advertised both his spiritual and earthly authority.32 In addition to his home, the Friend acquired other material symbols that proclaimed his position as Jerusalem’s leading figure. He possessed a carriage that he had brought from Philadelphia, which an eyewitness described as being emblazoned with “a cross of six or eight inches, surmounted by a star, with the letters U.F. on each side of the cross.” The prophet also possessed a similarly monogrammed set of silverware. When the Duc de La RochefoucauldLiancourt visited the Friend’s home in 1795, he carefully noted the signs of wealth and rank he encountered. The duc observed that the Comforter’s private chamber resembled “more the boudoir of a fine lady, than the cell of a nun” and took an inventory of its furnishings, which included a “looking-glass, a clock, an arm-chair, a good bed, a warming-pan, and a silver saucer.”33

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Figure 9. The Universal Friend’s final residence. Photograph by author.

Figure 10. The Universal Friend’s carriage. Photograph by author. Wilkinson Collection, Courtesy of the Yates County History Center, Penn Yan, NY.

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The Friend asserted rank, not just through material possessions, but in how he interacted with his followers. As previously mentioned, the prophet ate before anyone else was served. This practice mimicked hierarchical dining procedures in which masters ate before servants, men before women, and adults before children and served as another symbol of the Friend’s exalted position. Another observer arrived at a similar conclusion about the level of authority exercised by the Universal Friend. A humble farmer, William Hencher Jr., recounted seeing Jemima Wilkinson and her entourage when he was a boy as they passed through Newton, New York, on their way to the Friend’s Settlement. He described her as a “one woman power” who busied herself “controlling and directing men in all things appertaining to the journey.”34 Hencher’s remarks again make it clear that regardless of the Universal Friend’s sense of self, many continued to see the prophet as a presumptuous and usurping woman. Jemima Wilkinson, once ensconced in her prophetic persona, achieved a level of agency in the public realm not commonly seen among women. In the fall of 1794, the United States sent Colonel Timothy Pickering to Canandaigua, New York, in order to take charge of a delegation slated to hold a council there with the Six Nations. In October the Universal Friend, Rachel Malin, David Wagener, and Enoch Malin visited the town and, at the invitation of Pickering, dined with him at the home of Thomas Morris, son of the wealthy financier, Robert Morris. They then accompanied the colonel to the treaty council in order to observe the proceedings. After listening to some speeches, however, the Friend and his disciples kneeled down and prayed. The prophet then asked for permission to speak. Pickering, taken off guard by this turn of events, granted the request and, with the help of an interpreter, the holy messenger preached to the assemblage of Indians and whites. According to one witness, “she took her text methodically mentioning Chapter & Verse ‘Blessed are the Peace makers for they shall be Called the Children of God’ ” and many more biblical texts “with an Intention of Supporting the Importance of Peace & Love among the Indians and all men.” Thus, from the perspective of those who witnessed the event, Jemima Wilkinson, who was born a humble country girl from Rhode Island, shattered the boundaries of her sex by addressing the gathering of government officials and Native chiefs. The Haudenosaunee present that day apparently liked what she had to say and named her Shinnewawna gis tau, ge, “A Great Woman Preacher.”35 It is clear that people outside of the Society saw the sect’s leader as a woman who boldly transgressed social norms; however, it also appears that those within the group reacted to the Universal Friend’s ministry in ways that empowered women and challenged traditional gender roles. The spiritual authority held

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by the prophet’s female disciples, for instance, continued to increase once they were in New York. For example, Lucina Goodspeed, Experience Ingraham, Lucy Botsford, and other women frequently spoke at Sabbath-day meetings. Stafford Cleveland, who interviewed several surviving members of the Friend’s sect, described Jemima Wilkinson’s sister, Mercy Aldrich, as a “very prominent character in the Society” and recounted that she “took part in speaking and praying in the meetings, always with ability and pertinence.” Of course, women taking a leading role in meetings was nothing new to the Society of Universal Friends and had been a feature of the group since its inception.36 What was new was that several dozen of the prophet’s female adherents became recognized as the spiritual core of the sect. This aforementioned Faithful Sisterhood distinguished themselves by their devotion to the Friend and adherence to his teachings, including a commitment to a single life and celibacy. When Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt came to visit the Friend in 1795, he alluded to this coterie of chaste women but put a dark spin on it, asserting that the prophet manipulated their misguided faith in order to provide himself with a body of willing servants.37 The Frenchman’s opposition to the sect blinded him to the possibility that, far from being subordinated by their loyalty to the prophet, they were empowered by it. The Faithful Sisterhood’s spiritual authority and celibacy placed them outside the traditional gender hierarchy, gave them the opportunity to exercise independence, and involved them in tasks deemed as men’s work. Some younger members of the Sisterhood lived with their parents, while older ones who were widowed sometimes resided with the family of a married child. In a few cases they also worked as live-in housekeepers for other families in the Society. However, in renouncing marriage and childbearing, many among the Faithful Sisterhood lived independent of a male authority figure, owned property, and maintained power over their bodies. Some of the Sisterhood, such as Chloe Towerhill and Mary Bean, lived and worked in the Friend’s household. Other members of the female inner circle, like Eunice Beard, Hannah Baldwin, Martha Reynolds, and Elizabeth Kenyon, lived in their own homes and supported themselves on land provided to them by the prophet. In several other cases, members of the Sisterhood owned property and lived in a state of full economic independence. Stafford Cleveland describes Mary Holmes as being “independent in property”; likewise, Anna Wagener was a women of independent means and eventually owned hundreds of acres of land in Jerusalem. Sarah Clark, who for a time kept house for Thomas Hathaway Sr., ended up living on a three-hundred-acre farm she inherited from him after his death.38 That these women served as witnesses on important legal documents such as deeds also reflects their expanded role.

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For instance, Lucy Brown, one of the Sisterhood who lived on the Friend’s estate in a house she reportedly built for herself, witnessed a deed that transferred land in the town of Jerusalem to the prophet. Of course, Sarah Richards and, later, Rachel Malin most clearly demonstrate how the Sisterhood’s spiritual status served as a springboard for its members to become involved in aspects of life conventionally relegated to men. These women not only became the prophet’s chief spiritual lieutenants but, once in New York, his primary business agents.39 Conversely, after their move to New York, the Universal Friend’s male disciples experienced a loss of power when it came to religious matters. This is not to say that individual men did not continue to play a vital role in the sect’s spiritual life. Richard Smith, Asahel Stone, Benajah Botsford, and Elnathan Botsford Sr. frequently spoke at meetings.40 As husbands and fathers, the prophet’s male followers also continued to guide the religious upbringing of their children. However, by the time the Society relocated to New York, there was a marked decline in male religious leadership. Whereas in the 1770s and 1780s men like James Parker, Thomas Hathaway Sr., and William Potter acted as the Friend’s closest spiritual advisors, women occupied these positions by the 1790s. Rather than experiencing a decline in overall activity within the sect, the Universal Friend’s male disciples saw their responsibilities shift to more earthly concerns. Since the Society’s inception in the early 1780s, men had managed its properties and meetinghouses, and these sorts of duties increasingly came to circumscribe male responsibilities within the sect. James Parker, Judge William Potter, Thomas Hathaway, and Benedict Robinson took charge of the location, purchase, and initial settlement of the land that was to become the Universal Friends’ frontier refuge. Moreover, men monopolized positions that involved interactions between the Society and the outside world. For instance, in 1791 the sect decided to gain formal recognition as a religious denomination under an act passed by the New York legislature in 1784. In keeping with the terms of the law, which prescribed that each denomination had to elect trustees and that they had to be men, the sect chose Richard Smith, Isaac Nichols, Abel Botsford, Jonathan Dains, and John Briggs to serve in that capacity. For the next fourteen years, the Universal Friends reappointed these same individuals and tapped John Briggs to serve as their clerk. Though women like Sarah Richards and Rachel Malin managed the Friend’s personal estate, the Society may have thought it prudent to place males in positions that involved dealing with outsiders who expected men to handle matters of business, law, and politics.41

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Male Universal Friends may very well have perceived these changes in terms of loss. They experienced a decline in religious leadership and also witnessed how women’s growing spiritual power spilled beyond strictly religious matters and into day-to-day aspects of community life. Certainly those outsiders who commented on life in the Friends’ frontier sanctuary saw things in this light. The Quaker James Emlen encountered two of the prophet’s male followers, Enoch and Elisha Malin, in 1794 and referred to them as “being of the Number of those who were led captive by the wild infatuation of this deluded Woman [Wilkinson].” When Emlen later visited the Comforter at Jerusalem, he encountered a couple more of the holy messenger’s male adherents. To him, these individuals, like the Malin brothers, embodied a diminished manhood: Near the Chimney Corner sat a Man rather past the Meridian of life whom they called friend [Thomas] Hathaway [Sr.], his frame being much reduced he pretty soon informed us that he had been in a Consumption more than twelve Months, but that he believed all was well with respect to his Soul. this last Sentence seemed to strike me with a degree of concern on the poor Man’s Account under an apprehension that he had been seduced into a self righteous state of Mind. In Emlen’s eyes, Hathaway’s condition reflected the negative effects allegiance to the Public Universal Friend had on the minds and bodies of men. He drew similar conclusions about a second man seated near Hathaway, recalling that he possessed a “countenance bespoke a state of Anxiety bordering on despondency.” The Quaker claimed that such a fate awaited all those men who “had both forsaken their Wives & families & left all to follow her.”42

Community in Context The Society of Universal Friends was not the only religious group in early America to express their faith through community life. As far back as the seventeenth century, New England’s Puritans had linked the two. For them, a town was not just collection of people joined together by physical proximity but a covenanted community in which neighbors closely watched and supported each other in order to keep anyone from falling into sin. Later, German pietists who followed Johann Conrad Beissel to America established the Ephrata Commune in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1732.43 By the late eighteenth century, several sectarian groups were experimenting with communal living. The radical perfectionist Shadrack Ireland established a community of his followers at Harvard, Massachusetts, in the 1770s,

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but this attempt at communitarianism lost momentum after his death in 1778. The Shakers were far more successful in bridging the gap between religious belief and community life. Though the sect had not formalized the relationship between Shaker principles and collectivism before the death of Ann Lee in 1784, the leaders who followed her such as James Whittaker, Joseph Meacham, and Lucy Wright institutionalized communal living as a key aspect of Shakerism by the first decades of the nineteenth century. Starting at Niskeyuna (Watervliet) and New Lebanon, New York, in 1787, Elder Meacham began to formulate a system of rules and practices for group living—including the communal ownership of property. By 1794 the Shakers had established nine other settlements in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine.44 As with the Shakers, communal life among the Society of Universal Friends challenged the gendered status quo. The alterations each sect made to traditional relations between men and women did not emerge from any desire to be social reformers but were a product of their religious convictions. On the surface at least, it appears that the Shakers developed a far more radical vision of community life, and in some respects this is true. Whereas the Universal Friend encouraged but did not require celibacy among converts, the Shakers made celibacy a core tenant of their faith. They held that sex and other forms of carnal pleasure (which included worldly ties rooted in marriage and the nuclear family) were a source of sin and an obstacle to salvation. This feature of the Shaker faith found its origins in revelations Ann Lee had in England before coming to America in 1774. The Shaker leaders who came to power after Lee’s passing formalized her views on marriage and sex, and celibacy and the systematic separation of men and women became signature features of Shakerism by the late 1780s. Shaker men and women worked, slept, and ate apart; the only significant time they spent together was during meetings for worship.45 A second area where the Shakers diverged from social norms more forcefully than the Universal Friends was in their attitudes toward property. In the period of institutionalization that followed Ann Lee’s death, the Shaker Church established the collective ownership of property as an essential part of community life. Wilkinson and her followers never even approached such a radical alteration of social and economic norms. At best, when the Universal Friends embarked upon their plan of frontier settlement, they made some provisions for the communal purchase of property and aimed to make sure that all sect members were able to obtain at least some land. These plans, however, quickly fell apart once the Friends reached New York. In addition, it is clear that even though the Society planned to purchase their property

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as a group, they did not intend to institute the collective ownership of property, and whatever lands they obtained were quickly divided up into private holdings.46 The Universal Friends never developed the elaborate, hierarchical, and highly restrictive rules and institutions that the Shakers created to govern interpersonal relations. During the early nineteenth century, Shaker leaders increasingly formalized regulations governing dress, work, and speech and eventually codified them in 1821 as “The Millennial Laws.” An authoritarian form of governance complemented these rules. Shakers organized themselves into a hierarchy of “families,” communities, and bishoprics all under the central control of the head elders and eldresses at New Lebanon. They did not elect their leaders; instead, current elders and eldresses appointed new ones, and the church expected its members to follow their directives and rulings without question.47 In contrast, though the Universal Friends certainly maintained restrictions on dress, speech, and demeanor rooted in Quaker discipline, the only rules among the Society were the largely unwritten ones idiosyncratically enforced by the prophet. Indeed, stories about the Friend making wayward disciples wear cow’s bells as a form of punishment seem almost trivial compared to the system of regulations and punishments Shakers faced. The only collective institution the Society maintained was a fivemember board of trustees which only oversaw the sect’s business interests and had little authority over its members’ daily lives. One thing the Shakers and Society of Universal Friends had in common was their female members’ deep involvement in the religious life and management of their sects. In keeping with their habit of institutionalization, the Shakers did more to formalize power sharing between men and women. Under Joseph Meacham in the late 1780s, each sex found equal representation at every level of the Shaker hierarchy. Families, communities, and bishoprics always had matching pairs of male and female elders and eldresses who governed over spiritual matters and matching pairs of deacons and deaconesses who oversaw their worldly affairs. Despite the more expansive role they carved out for women in religious and spiritual matters, neither sect challenged the standard gender division of labor. Male and female Universal Friends and Shakers continued to do the sort of work that men and women did in society at large. It is true that the Shakers pioneered a system of job rotation in which individuals mastered a number of trades over time; however, this practice did not involve men doing tasks traditionally seen as women’s work or vice versa.48 Though the Shakers led the way in formalizing the concept of male and female equality, the Universal Friends did more to empower women in

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practice. Beneath the structures of male-female power sharing in the Shaker Church, lurked a conservatism concerning women’s roles and authority. It might sound odd for a sect that was so powerfully shaped by a female prophet, but many Shakers were resistant to the idea of female leadership. In other words, they were happy to follow the dictates of a divinely empowered woman prophet, but they were not interested in following other women appointed by more earthly powers. When Joseph Meacham attempted to establish the principle of gender equality in matters of church governance, he met resistance to the idea that lasted for roughly a decade. This opposition peaked when Lucy Wright took over leadership after Meacham’s death in 1796, and the high levels of apostasy that the Shakers suffered at this time may have been a result of disaffection over her ascent to power.49 The idea of equal male and female leadership was more of a theory than a reality among the Shakers. Though male elders and female eldresses took an equal hand in spiritual governance, men dominated ministerial correspondence concerning the central theological issues facing the sect. The gap separating male and female power was far more pronounced in areas that touched on temporal matters. Though the Shakers called their male deacons “Trustees” because they held property in trust for their communities, they referred to female deacons as “Office Sisters” because they did not. Thus, like the outside world, property remained the preserve of men. Moreover, male elders and deacons made rulings that affected the lives of the sect’s female members, but only rarely did women make decisions that touched the lives of men.50 The Universal Friends did more to forward the reality of female authority in the spiritual and temporal realms. The group’s innercircle of female disciples, the Faithful Sisterhood, dominated spiritual affairs within the sect. In addition, it is clear that leading women in the Society like Sarah Richards exercised real power in realms traditionally seen as the purview of men, held property, and lived independent of male authority figures. Besides the sectarian communities of early America, changes concerning constructs of manhood and womanhood that took shape during the revolutionary and early national periods provide another valuable context through which to understand the significance of the social order the Universal Friends fashioned in their New Jerusalem. Gender roles and relations in the Society’s frontier enclave intersected with new models of womanhood that began to emerge in the late eighteenth century. Women had been traditionally portrayed as physically, intellectually, and morally weaker than men, but this perception began to change during the Revolution. While Americans held to the notion of female subordination and physical inferiority, at least some began to rethink the idea that women were men’s moral inferiors.

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With the rise of a republican society came a growing concern about the quality of its citizens. In a monarchy a virtuous ruler is the key to good government, but in a republic the virtue of the citizenry is essential to its survival. The answer to how America would manage to maintain a virtuous citizenry lay with the nation’s women. Revolutionaries reenvisioned women as “republican mothers” whose duty it was to raise their children to be good citizens and “republican wives” who would help their husbands keep to the narrow path they had to follow in order to secure the future of the nation. If women could foster virtue and morality in those around them, it was a logical corollary that they were moral and virtuous beings themselves. This vision of a domestic, yet politicized, role for women in society opened the door to female education. Women may not have been held as the intellectual equals of men, but there was a growing sense that they had minds worthy of cultivation and the intellect necessary to bring up future generations of solid republican citizens. Yet even as republican wives and mothers, women in revolutionary America did not gain any formal, independent political voice or the privileges of citizenship. Their role in the republic continued to be subordinate to the dominant, public role played by men.51 Evangelical Christianity also encouraged a new formulation of womanhood. Since the early eighteenth century, women had dominated church membership in regions like New England, and thus there was a growing sense that women were more spiritual and religiously minded than men. The First Great Awakening and further revivals in the late eighteenth century nurtured the idea of women’s spiritual equality. On one level, evangelicals simply reasserted the Protestant concept of the Priesthood of all Believers— that all faithful people were equal in the eyes of God regardless of their sex or race. On another, however, the evangelical impulse helped forge a new image of women as being men’s superiors when it came to matters of faith and morality. In short, a new vision came into focus (at least for middle- and upper-class whites) in which women were closer to God.52 In several respects, the Universal Friends were in tune with these changing perceptions of women. The growing monopoly on religious authority among the Society’s female members matched larger social trends that identified women as more spiritual beings. Also in keeping with broader social changes in the early republic that increasingly associated men and masculinity with nonspiritual matters such as business and politics, the prophet’s male disciples increasingly focused on worldly pursuits. Even men involved in the governance of the sect devoted themselves to more administrative, secular tasks. The fact that married couples who joined the Society of Universal Friends tended to have significantly fewer children than their nonsectarian

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neighbors also paralleled larger demographic trends at the turn of the century. Among certain sectors of the American population, couples began to limit the number of children they produced by the late eighteenth century. This practice was both a catalyst and the product of a new emphasis on women as child raisers rather than simple childbearers.53 However, there are also a number of ways in which the behavior of the Universal Friends does not match the evolution of gender conventions in the early republic. Their growing association with spiritual matters did not relegate the Society’s women to a private, domestic sphere. On the contrary, the prophet’s leading female disciples exercised power in the public realm. The use of spiritual and moral authority in order to leverage an entrance into public life prefigures the reform movements of the nineteenth century when women used the argument that their responsibilities as Christians and mothers justified their move into social reform and politics.54 Female Universal Friends took things one step further by holding property, running households, and engaging in business dealings independent of men. In addition, the members of the Society who embraced celibacy divorced themselves from the roles of husband, wife, father, and mother that remained at the heart of gender conventions throughout the revolutionary era and beyond. Ultimately, the social order the Universal Friends constructed was more closely tied to New Light and Quaker models of domesticity than turnof-the-century reconfigurations of womanhood. New Lights in mid- to late-eighteenth-century New England developed new concepts of manhood, womanhood, and domestic life that influenced the social order the sect forged in New York. The evangelicals reenvisioned men and women as spiritual equals and marriage as a partnership rather than an arrangement where the husband simply ruled over his wife and children. Over time, evangelicals also came to emphasize women’s piety and spiritual gifts over men’s. Likewise, sermon literature aimed at men forwarded an image of the ideal man as an individual faithfully devoted to performing earthly duties related to his family and work.55 Not surprisingly, Quaker domesticity and gender norms had the most profound impact on the social order created by the Universal Friends. Just about every feature of life in the sect’s frontier enclave had Quaker precedents. The limited number of children born to parents in the Society is a pattern that had been already established among Quakers who conceptualized marriage as a spiritual partnership in which men and women aided each other’s religious progress, rather than as an economic arrangement where the main goal was to produce offspring. As far as children were concerned, Quakers emphasized quality over quantity, and their aim was the proper

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rearing of children rather than bearing a large brood of them. The dominant role that female members of the prophet’s sect played in religious and community life also had Quaker roots. The Society of Friends pioneered the idea of the “Mother of Israel”: a spiritually potent woman who, besides being an essential feature of Quaker domesticity, was also active in public life. The archetypal Mother of Israel was Quaker cofounder Margaret Fell. She and those who followed in her footsteps carved out an expansive role for Quaker women in which they preached in public and gained increased authority at home. The Quakers emphasized gender equality in matters of religion and church governance and institutionalized it in the form of separate (but equal) men’s and women’s monthly meetings. Quaker women regulated their own affairs and issued rulings that affected family life and, thus, the lives of men. In the Society of Friends, women had to answer to God and their monthly meeting before their husbands or fathers. This chain of command placed them under the watchful eye of other female Friends but insulated them from male authority. The Quakers—though they did not promote celibacy—also provided opportunities for women to live outside of the institutions of marriage and family. They believed that spiritually gifted women should preach in public and embark on speaking tours that would preclude, or sharply alter, life as a wife and mother.56 People who visited the Universal Friend’s frontier community felt that there was something different (and unsettling) about the social order the prophet and his disciples constructed there. This impression was accurate in several respects. A distinct pattern of childbearing and a greater acceptance of female independence set them off from mainstream society. In addition, the roles played by men and women in the Society reveal that not only did women increasingly dominate religious life in the community but used their spiritual gifts to justify activities and gain authority in areas of life traditionally limited to men. Certainly the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt was one of those who came away from a visit disquieted by the experience. After his brief stay in Jerusalem, the French aristocrat reflected that he “had seen more than enough, to estimate the character of this bad actress, whose pretended sanctity only inspired us with contempt and disgust, and who is altogether incapable of imposing upon any person of common understanding, unless those of the most simple minds, or downright enthusiasts.” It is clear that Liancourt found Jemima Wilkinson’s success in attracting a large band of followers as disturbing as her masquerade as a holy prophet. However, he took comfort in the observation that “the number of her votaries has, of late, much decreased” and the belief that her sect would soon disappear.

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Though Liancourt’s prediction about the demise of the Society of Universal Friends was several decades premature, his comments concerning its shrinking size were on the mark. The property disputes that had plagued the Society since its arrival in New York caused some of its members to drift away from the Friend’s ministry. In addition, by the turn of the century, there were a growing number of apostates who not only dropped out of the sect but turned on their one-time spiritual leader.57

Ch a p ter 7

Judges And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about. —Judges 2:14

Disputes and disappointments marked the last two decades of the Public Universal Friend’s ministry. The prophet had moved to the New York frontier hoping to find a peaceful sanctuary for himself and his followers, but instead he witnessed his disciples fall away and their Society descend into conflict. In addition, the seclusion that life in the backcountry afforded was only fleeting, and the Friend’s community of the faithful soon proved to be all too exposed to the baleful influence of outsiders. Methodist circuit preacher Thomas Smith demonstrated this in 1806 when he held an outdoor meeting in Jerusalem near the prophet’s home. According to Smith, he spoke to a large crowd while the Universal Friend observed from a distance. The preacher directly challenged the Comforter’s identity as a holy messenger, taking as his text Revelations 2:20: “Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.” Who Smith considered Jezebel was clear to everyone. When some of the Friend’s adherents reported what he had said to their leader, Smith recalled that “she wept, and then put the black mark of reprobation on me.”1 Itinerant preachers were not the only visitors to Jerusalem, and by the nineteenth century, tourists on their way to see Niagara Falls frequently made an excursion to see the Universal Friend. Several of these travelers 166

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published accounts that give the impression of a prophet whose charismatic powers were clearly on the wane. In 1810 a man who simply signed his narrative “T.C.” described the holy messenger as “a corpulent women, masculine featured, her hair (nearly gray) combed back, her age fifty-nine . . . neither her tone of voice nor manner bespoke much intercourse with the world, and nothing with the polite part of it.” After talking with the prophet about his religious views, the visitor took his leave, having found the Friend’s conversation “unpleasantly parenetic and didactice, abounding with scripture phraseology applied somewhat at random, and strongly savouring of what seemed to me affected mysticism.” Similarly, an anonymous traveler’s report from 1812 describes the Comforter as “selfish,” “tyrannical,” and “overbearing” and his followers as “weak in intellect, and inclined to superstitions.” The writer also foresaw the sect’s decline, asserting that it did not “exceed one hundred in number” and predicting “the submission which they made [to the Friend], will not probably be imitated by their children.”2 It would be easy to pass off these observations as uninformed opinions that do not accurately portray the Universal Friend or his Society, yet there is more than a kernel of truth to them. The prophet was aging and losing the energy and comeliness of youth that had served him so well in the early years of his ministry. After the move to the New York frontier, the Friend also lost access to large numbers of potential converts in the thickly settled East; worse yet, the followers he had already attracted began to fall away. The primary source of trouble, however, was a rebellion against the prophet’s rule led by defecting members of his sect. These rebels challenged the Universal Friend’s claims to divine status and focused their attacks on his earthly bases of power.3 The apostates who led the revolt against the prophet were all men, and their methods mark the gendered nature of the rebellion. One dimension of their campaign centered on prosecuting the Friend for blasphemy. Though this effort was certainly a response to the challenge the holy messenger posed to Christian orthodoxy, it was more a reaction against what they came to see as the prophet’s usurpation of male religious authority. The dissidents’ attack on the Friend’s property holdings was also related to conflict over the proper roles for men and women. What became a decades-long effort to strip the prophet of his sizeable estate was not just motivated by the prospect of material gain, but by the very fact that the Friend’s standing as a leading property holder flew in the face of basic social norms and gender hierarchies. At the turn of the century, America was a place where property ownership was supposed to be the preserve of men, and thus, the Comforter stood as a threatening symbol of disorder.

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The Public Universal Friend faced many judges in his final decades on earth. Some of them were judges in the literal sense as the prophet found himself engaged in a series of court battles to save his reputation and property. Figuratively, the Friend faced the judge of an early American republic in which gender hierarchy was a key element of its social order and that looked askance at those who challenged it.

Blasphemy The revolt against the Universal Friend took shape in the years following his move to Jerusalem. Its main instigators were two of the prophet’s oldest and most prominent converts, James Parker and Judge William Potter. The land grab they initiated in the early 1790s that left many of their coreligionists without property helped to precipitate their apostasy. When William Savery passed through Jerusalem in the fall of 1794, he asserted that William Potter had already retracted his allegiance from Jemima Wilkinson, stating, “Our friend Potters good Understanding would not Suffer him to remain a dupe to the delusions of an Arrogant, Assuming & presumptuous Women.” During Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt’s visit in the summer of 1795, he reported that James Parker “espoused very zealously the cause and interest of the prophetess.”4 So, either Liancourt was mistaken about Parker’s loyalties, or his break with the prophet took place sometime after the Frenchman’s visit. Judge William Potter and James Parker were in a good position to make trouble for the Universal Friend. Potter was wealthy and influential, and Parker won appointment as one of the first justices of the peace for Ontario County in 1793, giving him the means to transform opposition against the prophet into legal action.5 The opening shot against the Comforter came in the fall of 1794 from Judge Potter’s eldest son, Thomas. William Savery mentioned the episode in his journal, writing that “Sheriff Norton informed us he had lately attempted to Serve a Writ on Jemima Wilkinson at the Suit of Judge Potter’s son Thomas.” The Friend initially refused to recognize the writ, which was addressed to Jemima Wilkinson. Only after some negotiation did the prophet agree to accept the warrant and post bail “under the name of ye Universal Friend commonly calld Jemima Wilkinson.” As to the origins of the suit, Savery explained that the Friend had once given a mare to Thomas Potter’s wife, who happened to be Jemima Wilkinson’s sister, Patience. When the prophet asked for it back, Patience returned the horse without her husband’s approval. Angered at this affront to his property rights as a man, Thomas sued the Friend for the horse’s return. Savery concluded his account by observing, “T. Potters Wife being Extremely attached

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to her Sister . . . we may pronounce that her & her husband are unhappily Connected.” Enmity toward the Universal Friend became a family affair in the Potter clan—at least among its men. Not only did Thomas Potter take a hand in the harassment of the prophet, but one of his brothers, Benedict Arnold, became a judge for Ontario County and helped assure that the Comforter and his followers had a difficult time receiving satisfaction in its courts.6 Besides legal action, opposition to the Friend took political form. Though the prophet and the leading apostates lived in separate communities, the latter in the Friend’s Settlement and the former in Jerusalem, they occupied the same local political jurisdiction. This situation was not to the liking of the Friend’s opponents, and they took action early in 1799 to complete their separation from him. Several of the inhabitants of City Hill submitted a petition to Ontario County’s Court of Sessions on February 1 in which they expressed their desire “to be incorporated into a town by themselves” separate from Jerusalem in order “to prevent disputes and preserve friendship among us.” Among the signatures attached to the document was that of its author, James Parker. Joining his name are those of several other Universal Friends who had turned against the prophet, including Daniel Brown, Jesse Dains, and Thomas Hathaway Jr. Though the county never acted on the petition, its existence and the names attached to it shed light on a growing rebellion among the Friend’s followers.7 The Comforter also faced a campaign of character-damning rumors. Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt related a tale concerning the prophet’s alleged sexual indiscretions with James Parker. According to the nobleman, one night Parker “stole into the celestial bed” of the Friend, “which happened to be already occupied by a young girl of only fourteen.” The girl, “who had frequently heard the All-friend say, that the Messiah sometimes appeared to her in her bed under different forms,” believed that she had been “chosen by heaven to enjoy the felicity of being witness of one of these apparitions, and retired piously to the edge of the bed.” Later, when the prophet came to bed, the girl “with awful respect and in profound silence . . . listened to the repeated raptures, with which the pretended Messiah blessed the Allfriend!” In a similar vein, Liancourt repeated the claim of a local justice of the peace that a girl who once lived with the Friend had given a deposition in which she swore that she caught the prophet’s “negro woman” (a reference to Chloe Towerhill) smothering a new born “between two mattresses,” the clear implication being that the child was the prophet’s illegitimate and unwanted offspring. The Frenchman concluded “that this deposition exists is undeniable,” though neither he nor anyone else ever seems to have seen it.8

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Those who spread such rumors aimed to destroy the Friend’s reputation by striking at the very core of his identity as a divine figure. Instead of chaste and celibate, they portrayed the prophet as a promiscuous fornicator and a ruthless imposter capable of infanticide. These attacks were but an overture to a far more serious assault against the Universal Friend: his prosecution for blasphemy. In a way, it is surprising that a woman who claimed to have died and been reanimated by God to serve as his holy messenger had not been charged with this crime earlier. Be that as it may, the prophet’s startling claims about his semidivine status eventually caught up with him. In particular, the question of whether or not the Friend claimed to be Jesus Christ was at the crux of the blasphemy charge. James Parker set things in motion on September 17, 1799, when he issued a warrant for the holy messenger’s arrest.9 It was one thing to issue a warrant against the Public Universal Friend, it proved to be quite another to actually apprehend him. After he drew up the document, Parker gave it to Thomas Hathaway Jr. to serve. Hathaway, who as a teenager had ridden next to the Comforter on his preaching tours and once reputedly saved the prophet’s life when he stopped him from being carried off by a runaway horse, waited for a good opportunity to make an arrest. He got it when the Friend, accompanied only by Rachel Malin, rode through the City Hill settlement visiting her faithful followers who still resided there. Hathaway intercepted the prophet on the main road leading from Seneca Lake, but instead of meekly submitting to arrest, the Friend, who by all reports was a skilled rider, galloped down a hill toward the lake at breakneck speed. This time Hathaway was unable to stop the prophet’s speeding horse and he got away.10 A second attempt to arrest the Friend took place at his home, and it also ended in failure. On this occasion, Eliphalet Norris (who had been appointed as a constable by James Parker) and Enoch Malin tried to take the holy messenger into custody. They located him in the small workhouse across the road from his home where the women of the prophet’s household made cloth. When Norris and Malin entered the building, the women within mobbed them, tore their clothes, tossed them outside, and barred the door. Local lore has it that Lavina Davis, a member of the Friend’s Faithful Sisterhood personally pitched Norris out into the road. This rendition of events is backed up by James Brown Jr.’s recollection of the incident in which he notes that “after Enoch and Eliphalet had been roughly handled by the women, they beat a retreat to repair their wardrobes.”11 There was a third and final attempt to arrest the Universal Friend. Not long after Norris and Malin’s humiliating defeat, they returned to the

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prophet’s home in the dead of night in order to take him into custody. This time they were taking no chances and had gathered a posse of about thirty men, including James Parker, constable Griffin Hazard, the teenage brothers Isaac and Ephraim Kinney, Daniel Brown Jr., Benedict Robinson, and a Dr. Calvin Fargo. Except for Norris, Hazard, and Fargo, all of these individuals had once been members of the Society of Universal Friends and Isaac Kinney had even worked for its leader. The men surrounded the Friend’s house and, when its occupants barred the door to prevent their entrance, Daniel Brown Jr. broke it down with an axe. The posse then entered and apprehended the Friend. Dr. Fargo, whose job it was to determine if the prophet’s health was up to a late-night trip to the county jail in Canandaigua (apparently the Friend was suffering from a bout of sickness), decided that he was too ill to travel. At this point, Benedict Robinson reportedly yelled through a window that they should cart him off to jail regardless. Cooler heads prevailed and the posse and the prophet worked out a deal. The men served the arrest warrant but dropped their plans to take the Comforter to jail that night; in return, the Friend promised to appear in county court to answer the charge brought against him.12 The revolt against the Universal Friend spread beyond the dissidents at City Hill and involved members of the Society who had helped establish Jerusalem. Enoch Malin was the brother of two of the prophet’s most devoted followers, Rachel and Margaret Malin, and once a member of his household. Likewise, Benedict Robinson had turned against the Comforter. His betrayal is all the more striking considering the fact that he had been instrumental in obtaining land for the Friend in Jerusalem. Exactly why Robinson broke with the prophet is unclear, but perhaps the best explanation is that it was a result of the humiliating punishment the Friend levied against him for his marriage to Susannah Brown in 1792. Whatever the cause, Robinson’s feelings toward the prophet had soured by 1795. When Liancourt passed through Jerusalem that year, he met Robinson and noted that he spoke about the Friend “with evident embarrassment, in terms which still evince his attachment, yet without enthusiasm, and without extolling her or placing implicit confidence in her divine mission.” An agreement signed between Richard Smith, Rachel Malin, and Benedict Robinson in October 1796 shows that Robinson had initiated a lawsuit against his one-time spiritual guide over land in Jerusalem, and a letter from Robinson to the Universal Friend dated July 7, 1805, reveals that legal wrangling between the two continued for nearly a decade. Years later, in 1813, Robinson gave testimony in which he stated that “for ten or twelve years” he did not participate in worship with the Society and that “during some

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part of that time had frequent disputes with members of said society, and with Jemima Wilkinson.”13 Once those in opposition to the Friend had managed to serve the arrest warrant, they then set about building their case against the prophet. The charge the Comforter faced was “on the Complaint of Chloe Dains wife of Jesse Dains,” who accused him of “saying She was the Son of God and that there was no way to Happiness but by obedience to her Command.” James Parker gathered testimony to support the allegation from Chloe Dains’s husband, Jesse; her nephew, Francis Dains; Eliza Malin, the wife of Enoch Malin; and Thomas Judd (the only deponent not associated with the Society of Universal Friends). He also took a statement from the Universal Friend in which the prophet claimed that the complaint laid against him was “Malicious” and declared he would “not Submit to any Examination” until he came “to the proper place of trial.”14 As would be expected, much of this testimony focused on the allegation that the prophet claimed to be Jesus Christ. Thomas Judd recalled that the Friend told him “that she held her self to be the Son of God” and that the “many misfortunes in worldly” affairs he had suffered were divine punishment for his refusal to believe she was the Messiah. Likewise, Jesse Dains asserted that when he asked the Friend if he was Christ returned, he replied, “I am.” Eliza Malin backed up these accusations, recalling that the prophet had once stated: It is not twenty years Since Jemima Wilkeson dyed, and then I looked down on the Children of men and did not know that I could undertake for them to come and suffer for them again but I had such compassion for them that I undertook for them and I looked down on the body and thought it was as comly a one as I ever saw and then I entered into it and have been traveling about from city to city and from village to village. In short, Malin claimed that the Friend spoke as Christ, relating how he had decided to reanimate Jemima Wilkinson’s body and use it as a vessel for his Second Coming. Finally, Chloe Dains testified that she heard “her [Wilkinson] say ‘I am the son of God as true as the breath in thy nostrils.’ ”15 Besides such accusations of blasphemy, the depositions also clearly imply that the Friend posed a threat to the social order and the authority of the state of New York. Thomas Judd claimed that since the prophet held himself to be Christ, he and his followers believed “her word was a law” and they “did not mean to be subject to the law of this State.” Chloe Dains’s deposition echoes this charge, relating that the Friend “said her word should be a law.” Those who

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testified against the holy messenger also portrayed him as upsetting hierarchies of gender and class. Eliza Malin asserted that the Friend “teaches [her disciples] to give up all their own understanding and obey her in all things” and added, “I have seen some of her followers give them selves up to her on their Knees accordingly.” What the deponent described was a domineering woman who overawed her adherents, regardless of their age, status, or sex, and therefore uprooted a system of rank that placed men above women, rich above poor, adults over children. Chloe Dains’s testimony also gave the impression that the prophet wanted to turn the world upside down. In particular, she claimed the Friend actively worked to undermine the institution of marriage, recalling that the prophet “tryed to get me to go and leave my Husband and I refused, and also to get my husband to go and live with her and he refused.” Thomas Judd likewise characterized the Comforter as a source of disorder, concluding that he “is the cause of all the difficultys at law in our neighborhood.”16 James Parker may have also used Chloe Dains’s testimony to charge the Universal Friend with threatening violence against those who opposed him. Stafford Cleveland claims that Chloe “made affidavit that she had reason to fear for the safety of her life, on account of the Friend.” In a deposition, Dains did state that she was “afraid our [she and her husband] Lives and property will be destroyed by her the said Jemima,” which could be construed as a clear indication that Dains felt threatened by the prophet. Furthermore, she asserted that her fears were not groundless and that her family discovered several unidentified persons “lying round our House in the night a number of times.” Chloe clearly implied that the intruders acted under orders from the Friend and aimed to do them harm. Even if Parker did seek to bring this charge against the prophet, nothing came of it, which is not surprising considering how the blasphemy case faired in court.17 In June 1800, the Universal Friend, accompanied by Rachel Malin and other loyal disciples, made the journey to Canandaigua to face the charge laid against him. It did not bode well for the prophet that his enemies’ influence reached all the way to the county seat, for the court had appointed William Potter to assist the district attorney in preparing the indictment and presenting evidence for the prosecution. Nonetheless, the trial did not go according to plan for Potter, Parker, and all those who had a hand in bringing it about. The problem was that the three judges of the court could not agree if blasphemy was even a crime in New York. One judge thought that it was, but the other two overruled him, arguing that such a charge ran counter to the state and federal constitutions.18 Having decided that someone could not be prosecuted for blasphemy in New York, the grand jury had little choice but to reject the indictment

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against the Friend. Thus the effort to prosecute the prophet failed before it even got off the ground. Judge Morgan Lewis, who was the presiding justice of the court, announced the decision and then reportedly invited the defendant to say some words to the assembly. The Comforter, who was always eager to spread his message, readily obliged, and the court, including those who hoped to witness the prophet’s conviction, instead got to hear him give a sermon. When a lawyer in the courtroom later asked Lewis what he thought of the Friend’s speech, he reportedly answered, “We have heard good counsel, and if we live in harmony with what that woman has told us, we shall be sure to be good people here, and reach a final rest in Heaven.” Instead of defeated and humiliated, the Public Universal Friend left the court free and triumphant.19 If the prophet’s enemies wanted to defeat him, they clearly had to find a better means than targeting his character and beliefs.20

Divisions The attempt to prosecute the Universal Friend for blasphemy grew out of bitter factionalism within his sect. A growing number of apostates not only abandoned the prophet but actively worked to bring down their one-time leader, while in opposition stood loyalists who maintained their allegiance to the Comforter. Three factors—gender, economic outlook, and property disputes—shaped these divisions. The most obvious distinction between those who betrayed the prophet and those who stayed true was their sex. Even though the majority of the Friend’s male followers remained loyal, the rebellion against the holy messenger was almost exclusively the work of men. All of the apostates’ leaders were men as were those among the group’s rank and file who actively worked to defeat the Friend. Chloe Dains seems to present an exception to this rule; however, it is very likely that she did not take part in the effort to prosecute the prophet on her own initiative. Sometime after the blasphemy case against him had collapsed, the Universal Friend reportedly encountered Chloe Dains and asked her, “Did thee think I would kill thee?” When she answered that she did not, the Friend replied, “Then why did thee swear so wickedly,” whereupon Dains admitted that others (likely James Parker and other male dissidents) had pressured her into it. It is not difficult to imagine that the wives of men who turned against the Friend would have at least had to passively go along with their spouse’s change in allegiance regardless of their own feelings. Nevertheless, a number of women defied their apostate husbands. Penelope Potter, the wife of Judge William Potter, remained devoted to the Friend as did Sarah Brown Potter, the wife of Benedict

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Arnold Potter. In addition, Hannah Card retained her commitment to the prophet even after her husband, Stephen, turned away from the Society.21 Differences in status, position, and economic outlook also separated loyalists from defectors. The schism within the Society of Universal Friends was not, however, simply a battle of rich versus poor. The men who rebelled against the prophet did possess, on average, more valuable estates than those who stuck with him. This is not surprising considering that some of the wealthiest men in the Society like William Potter, James Parker, and Benedict Robinson ended up opposing the Friend. Neither group was poor, however, and the property holdings for both exceed local averages. The median estate value for all the residents of Jerusalem Township in 1818 was $706.41, while the average for both loyalists and apostates among the Universal Friends stood at $1,772. Likewise, the mean assessment for all the residents of Milo Township in 1818 was $1,579, while that for those affiliated with the Universal Friends was substantially higher at $3,890. That Wilkinson’s followers were among the earliest settlers to the region and had had a longer time to develop valuable farms helps to explain this pattern.22 What really distinguished the men who led the battle against the Universal Friend was that they tended to be better politically connected than those who remained loyal to the prophet. William Potter, James Parker, and Eliphalet Norris quickly found their way into the ranks of county-level government as judges and justices of the peace—key positions of power and prestige in backcountry regions like turn-of-the-century central New York. In contrast, those who held to the Friend had not gained entrance into the higher levels of the local power structure. This was not only a product of the Universal Friends’ desire to separate themselves from earthly affairs but of apostates’ efforts to lock the prophet’s followers out of local- and countylevel positions. For instance, on June 17, 1800, Ontario County’s Court of Oyer and Terminer indicted James Parker “for misconduct in the office of justice of the peace.” According to the indictment, Parker had refused to administer an oath of office to Ashael Stone so he could act as an assessor for the town of Jerusalem. Seeing that Stone still maintained his allegiance to the prophet, it is likely that Parker’s inaction was a result of his desire not to provide his opponents with any advantage the office might bring them. Parker pled not guilty when he came to trial in 1801, but a jury found otherwise and the court fined him thirty dollars. Luckily for Parker, the assistant attorney general for the county, a Mr. Howell, had the conviction waived for unspecified reasons.23 The rebels also had a somewhat different economic orientation than loyalists. While both groups engaged in commercial pursuits such as land

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speculating and running grist and saw mills, those who turned against the prophet leaned more toward these activities. For instance, Eliphalet Norris was one of the few storekeepers in the area. In contrast, there were no merchants or storekeepers among the ranks of the Friend’s supporters. As with patterns of officeholding, the anti-Friend faction possessed more ties to the outside world—in this case those of credit and commerce—than those who remained in the Society.24 The rebellion against the Universal Friend’s rule should not be understood as a result of some sort of innate, male opposition to female power. Rather, it was the work of a subset of men in the Society who developed an economic and political outlook that ultimately put them at odds with the Comforter. The dissidents revoked their allegiance to the prophet and, instead, put their faith in the more worldly devices of property and political office. James Parker and William Potter gained entrance into the ranks of local notables only after they ended their attachment to the Friend and rapidly forged ties with larger political and economic networks. Meanwhile, in keeping with their sectarian creed, loyalists mostly limited their relationships to their coreligionists. In short, the rebels were men who had gained much from their move to New York and hoped to gain more. In order to fully take advantage of the opportunities for property and power offered by the revolutionary frontier, they turned away from a life of religious devotion and isolation in the Society of Universal Friends. Another issue that cleaved the Universal Friends into warring factions was the land disputes that had shattered the harmony of the sect in the early 1790s. Indeed, references to conflicts over property are almost as frequent as claims concerning the prophet’s heretical pretensions in the testimony gathered for the blasphemy trial. This is a good indicator that the real motive behind the effort to prosecute the Friend lay not in punishing alleged offenses against God but in the more worldly concerns of land, wealth, and power. A relatively clear picture emerges in the depositions of a heated battle over property involving the family of Jesse and Chloe Dains, the Friend, and several of his followers. Jesse Dains testified that the prophet demanded part of his farm for George Sisson and said that if he “would not give it up she would take up against me and fight the Battle for him.” Francis Dains added that another one of the Friend’s adherents, Reuben Luther, “came and told Unkel [ Jesse Dains] that the friend sent him here to demand the south half of Unkel’s farm and said the friend said George [Sisson] should have the other half.” Jesse Dains refused and threatened to take Sisson, Luther, and the Friend to court if they tried to take his farm. According to Frances Dains, the prophet then declared that if Jesse did not obey, he would “employ the

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best Lawyers and take the best council that could be had, and he should spend his property and Quit the Country.” Threat of legal action spilled over into threats of violence. Dains also deposed that one of the Friend’s followers said that if his uncle Jesse “would not give it [his farm] up” he would return “to cut the spring house all to peaces and take his house all to peaces and take away the fence and said he would do it.”25 Contention over the Dain’s farm dated back to at least the opening months of 1798. A case brought before the Court of Oyer and Terminer on June 21 indicates that Reuben Luther was indicted for larceny and that the two witnesses against him were Jesse and Frances Dains. As was often the case with court dockets, this entry lacks details, but it is safe to assume, considering who was involved, that the case was connected to the property conflict that embroiled the Dains family and several people loyal to the Society. The following February, Jesse Dains initiated suits against George Sisson, Ezekiel Sherman, and Jemima Wilkinson for trespass. The outcomes for the latter two are unknown, but on June 5, 1799, the court found Sisson guilty and charged him thirty-five dollars and six cents in damages. Finally, in November 1799, Ontario County’s Court of General Sessions found Jesse Dains guilty of assault and battery and fined him fifteen dollars. The list of witnesses includes a number of familiar names, including George Sisson and Francis Dains. From this case it appears that Jesse Dains was willing to meet threats of violence with violence.26 The battle over Jesse Dains’s homestead was the byproduct of a larger confrontation over land that went to the root of factionalism within the Society of Universal Friends. The source of the friction was an ongoing battle over the Potter Location: the fourteen-thousand-acre land grant the sect had obtained from New York in 1792. Arguments over this tract had erupted when James Parker and William Potter betrayed the spirit of the agreement under which it had been obtained—that all members of the Society would benefit from it—and, instead, divided up the property between themselves and a small group of confederates, leaving many Universal Friends empty handed.27 Contention reached a climax right around the same time that dissidents hatched their plan to arrest the Universal Friend for blasphemy. Starting in the late 1790s, William Potter initiated a series of successful ejectment suits against loyalists who claimed land in the contested tract. The first precedent-setting case came in June 1800 against George Sisson, one of the trustees of the Society of Universal Friends.28 George Sisson and other members of the Society facing ejectment at the hands of Potter and Parker did what they could to fight back, but the results were disastrous. In the spring of 1799, Sisson, John Briggs, and fifteen other

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Universal Friends signed an agreement promising to “engage to and with each other to pay our equal proportion of the cost and charges of all Suits . . . which is or may be brought against the Members of the Society of Friends.” They then hired Geneva lawyer William Stuart who, in an effort to reverse an earlier decision that had given possession of the land to Parker and Potter, initiated an appeal in New York’s Court of Chancery. In a letter to John Briggs, Stuart commented on the impending hearing, stating, “The prospect, however, of success has even grown brighter although I never thought it dark!”29 Unfortunately, everything went wrong for Sisson and his associates. The Court of Chancery upheld the previous ruling. Worse still, William Stuart apparently ran off with a $1,500 note Sisson and Briggs had given the lawyer to fund the legal battle against Potter and Parker. In the end, Briggs and Sisson had to sell all their property to pay off the note and the latter even spent time in debtors’ prison in Canandaigua.30 Sisson’s predicament certainly explains why the Universal Friend was so eager to provide him with land in Jerusalem, for the man had lost everything in an effort to defend the interests of the Society. The factions that formed as a result of these property disputes mirror the division that formed in the Society between those who remained steadfast in their allegiance to the Friend and those who rebelled against him. James Parker and William Potter not only orchestrated the ejectment suits against Sisson and other members of the Society but also led the effort to have the Friend prosecuted for blasphemy. Other individuals who benefited from Parker and Potter’s usurpation of the 14,000 acre tract—men like Benedict Robinson, Eliphalet Norris, and Thomas Hathaway Jr.—also became active opponents to Wilkinson. The battle over this land also lay behind a number of additional defections from the sect. For example, Jonathan Botsford, Benajah Botsford, and Asahel Stone all signed the 1799 agreement with George Sisson and John Briggs to share the costs of challenging Potter and Parker’s claims in court.31 However, when they lost their legal bid and William Stuart ran off with the money to finance future appeals, these men were desperate to obtain land in order to recoup their fortunes. Their plight eventually resulted in them turning away from the prophet. The men who abandoned the Society of Universal Friends did not just leave the sect but attempted to destroy it and its leader. More frequently than not, individuals who turn away from a religious group simply move on with their lives or, at worst, publish an exposé revealing its flaws and excesses as did the prophet’s one-time disciple, Abner Brownell. What William Potter, James Parker, and others orchestrated against the Friend made Brownell’s attacks seem mild. A desire to restore patriarchal order likely fueled their

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aggression. For men like William Potter and James Parker, the revolutionary era’s emphasis on the connections between property, citizenship, and manliness may have awakened in them the view that continued membership in a religious sect where women gained power and authority threatened their manhood. Their response was a vicious assault against the prophet and the sect he built.

Trials The vortex of property disputes that divided the Society eventually drew in its leader. The men who set out to bring the Friend down repudiated the prophet’s claim of being a spirit of God and simply saw her as a woman who flagrantly usurped male privileges, including land ownership. The frontier was supposed to be a place of opportunity where men could take their rightful place as property-holding patriarchs. The Universal Friend upended this vision by holding thousands of acres of land and, thus, keeping them out of the hands of men. Property and its gendered implications lay at the heart of the criticism aimed at the prophet. In his account of his visit to the Friend, Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt asserts that “she [Wilkinson] sows dissention in families, to deprive that lawful heir of his right of inheritance, in order to appropriate it to herself.” Thomas Morris made a similarly inaccurate claim that the Comforter “prohibited her followers from marrying; and even those who had joined her after having been united in wedlock, were made to separate, and live apart from each other,” a policy he “attributed to her desire to inherit the property of those who died.” Both passages characterize the Universal Friend as a devious female who sought to enrich herself by subverting a system of inheritance designed to transfer property from one generation of men to the next.32 Simultaneous with their efforts to prosecute the prophet for blasphemy, dissidents orchestrated an assault on the geographic and fiscal base of the Society of Universal Friends: the Comforter’s landholdings in the town of Jerusalem. The attack on this estate touched off a bitter legal conflict that touched dozens of people, involved numerous twists and turns, and took three decades to resolve. The length and complexity of the battle that unfolded over the prophet’s lands calls to mind the fictional Jarndyce v. Jarndyce featured in Charles Dickens’s novel, Bleak House, and as was also the case in Dickens’s tale, most of the original litigants were long dead by the time the courts resolved the dispute. In keeping with its stranger-than-fiction elements, the story of the fight over the Universal Friend’s estate starts with a love story. When the prophet’s

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confidant and second-in-command, Sarah Richards, died in 1793, she left her only child, Eliza, in the care of the Friend. The girl, who was only thirteen years old at the time of her mother’s death, became the instrument by which several designing men tried to strip the prophet of his property. Enoch Malin was one of them. As a member of the Comforter’s household, Enoch got to know Eliza quite well—so well that the two fell in love and eloped in 1796. Local tradition has it that Eliza snuck out of the Friend’s bedroom window on a Sabbath day while the prophet and his followers were at meeting and rode off with Enoch to meet James Parker, who, exercising his authority as justice of the peace, promptly married the couple. When the Friend got wind of what had happened, he was not pleased. Eliza was the daughter of his closest disciple and the prophet probably hoped that she would come to number among the ranks of the Faithful Sisterhood. Her marriage to Enoch spoiled this.33 Whether or not the Universal Friend hoped that Eliza would lead a celibate life, he had reason to rue the girl’s choice of marriage partners. Even though Enoch was the brother of some of the Friend’s most devoted followers, he did not prove to be the most upstanding member of the Society. A carpenter and millwright by trade, Enoch never seemed to get ahead in business and cast about looking for some way to earn a living. He eventually tried his hand at running a tavern but in this endeavor, like the others, he failed. All in all, it appears that Enoch was a good-natured, fun-loving, boisterous young man—not the sort that the Friend wanted marrying Sarah Richards’s daughter. That Enoch suffered from deficiencies in character is confirmed in Ontario County’s court records. In June 1799, just three years after his marriage to Eliza, Enoch faced the charge of fathering a “female bastard” child “on the body of Mary Kinney,” the unmarried daughter of a stalwart Universal Friend, widow Elizabeth Kinney. The court convicted Enoch of this scandalous crime and required him to pay Mary thirty dollars and the Overseers of the Poor for the town of Jerusalem seventy-five cents a week in order to provide for the upkeep of the child.34 As for Eliza, that she was only sixteen when she eloped and had spent most of her life under the watchful care of the Universal Friend means that she was probably not too well versed in the ways of the world, but her decision to run off with Enoch Malin certainly demonstrates that she had a rebellious streak. The marriage of Eliza Richards and Enoch Malin ended up triggering the battle over the Universal Friend’s estate. As Eliza’s husband, Enoch gained possession of any property she had inherited from her mother. Sarah Richards held a good deal of land upon her death; some of it she owned, but she held most of it on behalf of the Friend as his trustee. However, according to Enoch

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Malin and others who opposed the prophet, Richards’s will did not clearly establish that she held land in trust for the Universal Friend and, as a result, the document conveyed all of the property to her only beneficiary, Eliza, and through her to her husband, Enoch. Unfortunately for the Comforter, Sarah Richards’s will had been drawn up, not by a lawyer, but by her physician, Dr. Moses Atwater of Canandaigua, on November 16, 1793.35 The document’s fourth and fifth sections were the chief source of contention: Item 4thly, I give and bequeath to my dear & only daughter Eliza Richards all my property in Watertown Litchfield County & State of Connecticut. Also al the lands deeded to me by Benedict Robinson excepting one thousand Acres of Land I deed to Rachel Malin; also all the Receipts that I now hold for Lands or the avails of them; Also as to personal property I give her one Sorrel Mare & colt, one pide [black and white] Cow & four sheep. Item 5thly, I give & bequeath to my good & trusty friend Rachel Malin One thousand acres of land lying & situate in Number 7 in the second Range of townships of the Massachusetts preemption in the County of Ontario & State of New York; the said thousand acres to be taken off from the south end of the 2nd seven in the town deeded to me by Benedict Robinson. Also all that tract of land deeded me by Thomas Hathaway bearing Date the 2nd day of the fifth Month in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred & ninety three. . . . Also all the lands that has or may arise from Asa Richards estate deceased.36 Based on these passages, Enoch Malin argued that the will did not indicate that Sarah Richards held land as a trustee for the Universal Friend, all of the property mentioned in the document legally belonged to her, and this estate fell into the hands of Eliza Richards upon her mother’s death. Furthermore, he asserted that whatever land Sarah Richards had conveyed to Rachel Malin in the will was not a transfer from one trustee of the Friend to another but simply a gift of Richards’s personal property to a friend. His final claim was that Sarah had only conveyed a life right to the property she gave to Rachel and, upon Rachel’s death, the land should come back to Eliza Richards or her heirs.37 It is not clear exactly when Enoch hit on this interpretation of Sarah Richards’s will or if he had help in formulating it, though it is not difficult to imagine that James Parker or William Potter had a hand in the matter. These two men certainly possessed the motive to make trouble for the Universal Friend, had the legal know-how to exploit the vagaries of Sarah Richards’s will, and demonstrated a mastery of cutthroat tactics when it came to contested land claims. No matter what the case, by the spring of 1798, Enoch

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Malin began to take steps to challenge the prophet’s soil rights in Jerusalem. In May of that year, William Carter wrote to Richard Smith, stating, “I am told Enoch Malin brought an Ejectment for the whole of the land of Sarah & I am not without fears of his recovering before a jury of that Country [Ontario County]. I am told the will made by Sarah is defective in not giving the Lands to Rachel and to her heirs forever, which makes it an Estate only for life.” In June 1799, Enoch and Eliza Malin, as plaintiffs, faced off against Rachel Malin (on behalf of the Universal Friend) in Ontario County’s Circuit Court. The trial went in favor of the Friend and the jury “found the defendant not Guilty of the Trespass.” Thus the opening round of the battle for the Friend’s lands ended in victory for the prophet.38 Enoch Malin not only took action in court but on the ground. In the same year that his ejectment suit against the Friend failed, he began selling off portions of the prophet’s estate, asserting that the property was, by law, his. In the summer of 1799, Elnathan Botsford Jr. and his brother, Benajah, purchased four hundred acres from Enoch for $1,200. In August their father, Elnathan Sr., went to the Friend to see how he felt about the sale. According to his later testimony and that of other witnesses, the Comforter did not object. If true, this curious response may mean that the prophet did not yet recognize the threat Enoch posed and was quite happy to see Society members Benajah Botsford and his brother settle close by. However, the Friend eventually became alarmed as Enoch continued to sell portions of his land. Malin conveyed another fifty acres to Asahel Stone Jr. for $200 in 1805, and in 1806 Asa Ingraham paid $250 for sixty-two acres which he then sold to Truman Stone.39 After years of patience and repeated provocations, the Universal Friend fought back. In 1811, at the behest of the prophet, Rachel Malin initiated an ejectment suit in New York’s Court of Chancery against Enoch and Eliza Malin as well as those who had purchased parts of his estate from them. Benajah Botsford was not among the defendants, for he had died in 1801 in a freak accident when he fell from a load of hay. It is not hard to believe that the Friend and his loyal followers would have seen the event as an act of divine punishment for Benajah’s betrayal. In her complaint, Rachel Malin asserted that the contested lands had been held in trust for the Universal Friend by Sarah Richards and that, upon Richards’s death, they had been transferred into her hands as the prophet’s new trustee. Furthermore, it claimed that Enoch and Eliza Malin had knowingly and illegally trespassed on the Friend’s property. In a new twist, the defendants responded that the prophet and his followers had altered Sarah Richards’s will after her death and reminded the court that wills that had been tampered with were null

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and void. Their argument was a simple one: in lieu of a legitimate will, all the property held by Sarah Richards should naturally fall to her only heir, Eliza Malin.40 Five years passed before the Court of Chancery heard the case and much happened during this interlude. Both sides busied themselves by gathering evidence that supported their position.41 More significantly, a new person took the lead in the legal campaign against the Universal Friend. On July 8, 1812, Enoch and Eliza Malin sold their rights to the contested property for $1,000 and moved to Canada. Thereafter, the couple led a wandering existence, and Enoch soon died leaving Eliza with two small sons. Eliza ended up in Ohio and remarried before she too died on November 12, 1815, at the age of thirty-five.42 Elisha Williams, a lawyer from Hudson, New York, was the man who bought their claim. He was already involved in the Malins’ efforts to win possession of the Comforter’s estate and had been an associate of the New York Lessees, who had been the source of many of the problems the Universal Friends faced after their exodus to the frontier. Williams was politically well-connected, having served multiple terms in the New York Assembly as a Federalist, and would emerge as a prominent figure among antidemocratic forces at the State’s 1821 constitutional convention. In short, he represented a far more formidable foe than Enoch Malin and his allies. To aid in his battle against the prophet and his Society, Williams hired two lawyers from Geneva, Robert W. Stoddard and David Hudson.43 When Rachel Malin’s suit finally came before Chancellor James Kent in 1816, the result was anticlimactic. Instead of issuing a ruling, Kent put off hearing the case and ordered several questions to be determined before an Ontario County court—the most important of which was whether or not Sarah Richards’s will had been illegally altered.44 Wilkinson’s legal counsel, on the recommendation of Judge Kent, implored the prophet to enter his name as a joint plaintiff with Rachel Malin. Thomas Gold, one of the lawyers employed by Malin, asked, “Does she [Wilkinson] not sense that everything is at stake, the roof over her head” and advised, “the Friends name must be used, to wit, Jemima Wilkinson, as Complainant with you.” The prophet, ever mindful not to enmesh himself in earthly affairs or use his birth name, finally complied with the lawyer’s wishes after being convinced that not attaching the name to the bill of complaint would put his cause at risk.45 Elisha Williams took heart at Chancellor Kent’s directives, believing that he would fare much better in a court in Ontario County, where there already existed deep prejudice against the Friend and his Society. With the prophet’s suit temporarily stalled, Williams took the offensive and initiated ejectments against the Comforter and twelve of his followers living on the contested

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land. They came before Ontario County’s Circuit Court in June 1817, and it ruled in Williams’s favor on the grounds that Sarah Richards’s will had been tampered with, making it invalid. In effect, Williams and Ontario County jumped the gun and decided the case on one of the issues (the legitimacy of Richards’s will) that Judge Kent wanted determined before he or anybody else took any further legal action. Predictably, the Friend’s lawyers filed a complaint in the Court of Chancery which resulted in Judge Kent issuing an injunction against the ejectments in 1818. More important, the Chancellor altered his previous ruling and chose to decide for himself if Sarah Richards’s will had been tampered with, rather than having it determined by an Ontario County court. This was a significant victory for the Friend because it meant that this pivotal question would not be addressed by a local court under the influence of his enemies but by a far more impartial state judge. In a letter to Rachel Malin, Thomas Gold trumpeted that “I have at length got the better of your Enemies” and that the “Chancellor has decreed that all the Ejectments shall be stopt & that he will decide the causes.”46 The battle over the Universal Friend’s estate unfolded before a legal backdrop that was profoundly gendered. One of the anchors of property law in early America was the presumption that property ownership, especially of land, was essentially a male prerogative, and inheritance practices functioned to assure the orderly passage of property from one generation of men to the next. In New England, for example, wills regularly divided up land among the deceased’s sons (with the eldest commonly receiving a double portion), while daughters received their share of the estate in the form of cash, livestock, or goods. Moreover, when a husband died, his wife traditionally received a “widow’s third”—a third of the estate to guarantee her a maintenance. However, these allotments did not permanently become female property, for when a woman married, whatever property she held fell into the hands of her husband. For example, when a widow remarried, her widow’s third became the possession of her new husband or was restored to her deceased husband’s heirs. Such procedures were part and parcel of the legal concept of coverture: that once bound in wedlock, a woman became legally subsumed by her husband. In sum, a system of law was in place that helped to create a society in which women could grow up, reach adulthood, and grow old without ever exerting full control over property.47 The American Revolution only intensified the gendered connotations of property ownership. It swept away colonists’ identity as subjects of a monarchy and replaced it with one as citizens of a republic. To be a subject was essentially a passive condition that subordinated all people regardless of race, age, or sex. The role of a citizen was far more active, however, which then

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raised the question of what sorts of people could meet its demands. The ideal republican citizen was to be virtuous, active in public affairs, and independent. Americans conceived of independence as a social and economic condition of freedom rooted in property ownership: independent people were those who had enough wealth to support themselves free from dependence on others. Thus, until the concept of universal white male suffrage swept all before it in the early nineteenth century, Americans linked property to citizenship and gender, for they viewed property rights and, therefore, citizenship as the preserve of men. Following this logic, property ownership among women was out of step with America’s republican social order.48 As the old hierarchies of lineage and wealth fell into decline, new ones rooted in race and gender took their place, with the result that many of the cracks that had opened up in traditional gender hierarchies during the Revolution had closed by the early nineteenth century. For example, under New Jersey’s revolutionary constitution, single or widowed women who met age and property restrictions obtained suffrage rights, but the state eliminated this practice in 1807 by explicitly limiting voting rights to men.49 The Universal Friend and his sectarian community ran into the teeth of this resurgent masculinity. In politics, religion, and social life, American men reasserted their dominance, shored up old gender hierarchies that had been shaken by the Revolution, and used the rhetoric of republicanism to justify these moves. As society defined citizenship and property as distinctly male commodities, the Friend and his followers seemed increasingly deviant and threatening. This gender-charged challenge to the prophet came not only in the form of criticism from without but also rebellion from within. The male apostates who rose up against the holy messenger did so in an America that increasingly encouraged men to aggressively take hold of their privileges as citizens—be it voting rights or property ownership. Though it would not gain significant momentum until the nineteenth century, the Revolution laid the groundwork for claims of universal white male suffrage—the idea that all mature, male citizens, regardless of their economic circumstances, should have the right to vote simply because they were free (white) and men.50 Many also believed, with negative consequences for the Friend, that the Revolution justified male citizens’ aggressive pursuit of property. The fruits of this thinking could be seen across revolutionary America as white settlers battled Indians, wealthy land speculators, government authority, and each other for possession of frontier land, and rural folk in more established regions violently resisted laws and taxes that they saw as threatening their freeholds.51 For men like James Parker and William Potter, the Universal Friend stood in the way of the property and power that was their birthright.

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Seen in this light, the confrontation between the prophet and Elisha Williams is highly symbolic. Williams embodied the new republican man: he was economically independent, politically active, and learned. The Friend could not have been a greater contrast. He was unlettered, shunned worldly affairs, and acquired property and authority, not through reason and industry, but mystical claims of power. No matter his efforts to portray himself as a prophet of God, to men like Williams the Friend appeared as a dangerous female upstart. After the Universal Friend’s lawyers won the injunction against Elisha William’s ejectment suit, several years passed without any significant legal action. This proved to be a difficult time for the prophet as his lands in Jerusalem hung in the balance. With no end to the case in sight, Thomas Gold advised the Friend to accept a compromise offered by Williams. The deal involved the Comforter giving up the four hundred acres Eliza and Enoch Malin deeded to the Botsford brothers and helping to pay Williams’s court costs. Gold explained, “I cannot assent to the justice of any such terms, yet there are reasons in favour of a compromise. The increasing costs in court on one hand, the benefit on the other, of peace & quietness in advanced life, are worth considering.” In other words, he thought it worthwhile for the Friend to give up a portion of his estate, no matter how dubious the reasons for doing so, in order to settle the increasingly costly and bitter legal dispute. Gold concluded, “Were the case my own, I would give up the 400 acres.” The Friend’s lawyer may have doubted the wisdom of carrying on the fight but the holy messenger did not, and he went forward with his suit to win possession of his entire estate. In her reply to Gold, Rachel Malin simply stated, “The Friend has no idea of compromising with Williams.”52 Having chosen to continue on with the struggle, the Society busied itself preparing for a showdown with Elisha Williams.53 Rachel and Margaret Malin, Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer, and other disciples scoured the sect’s records and their personal papers looking for evidence that proved that Sarah Richards held the contested land in trust for the Friend. Meanwhile, John Briggs made numerous trips to Utica on behalf of the prophet to consult with Thomas Gold.54 The dispute over the Comforter’s estate finally made its way back to Chancellor James Kent in 1823, and on July 11, only days before his retirement, he announced a verdict in favor of Rachel Malin and the Public Universal Friend. He ruled that Sarah Richards had held the land in trust for the Friend and that the prophet had put forward money for its purchase and possessed a clear chain of title to it. As to the charge that Sarah Richards’s will had been tampered with, Kent agreed that the will had likely been altered. However, he argued that there was no evidence that the Universal Friend or one of his associates had changed the will, only that an unknown third party

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had done so. Most important, he observed that even if the will was changed, the alleged alterations in no way affected the disposition of Sarah Richards’s estate. Kent therefore concluded the will was legally sound and that its conveyance of property to the Universal Friend’s trustee, Rachel Malin, should stand.55 Elijah Williams did not easily accept defeat, and as soon as Chancellor Kent announced his decision, he set an appeal in motion. Chancellor Nathan Sanford, who replaced Kent after his retirement, reviewed it on August 4. Williams once again presented his claim that no legally valid trust existed between Sarah Richards and the Universal Friend and pressed the court to award the disputed lands to the “Heirs of Eliza Malin deceased the only daughter and child of the said Sarah Richards” (which by this point was Williams himself ) . He also repeated his assertion that Richards’s will had been tampered with and, therefore, should be voided. In addition, Williams sought to discredit the witnesses Rachel Malin presented, arguing that their testimony “ought not to be taken into considering in determining the rights of the parties, on account of their faith, their fanaticism, and their interest.” Put another way, he portrayed the prophet’s followers as deluded disciples who would do or say anything that he or his chief lieutenants ordered. Unfortunately for Williams, the new Chancellor did not accept his arguments and upheld Judge Kent’s decision.56 Williams again appealed the verdict, this time to the highest appellate court in New York State, the Court of Errors, which was comprised of the state’s lieutenant governor, chancellor, Senate, and the judges of its Supreme Court. In the final act of this long legal drama, the Court of Errors finally heard Elisha Williams’s appeal in 1828. Rachel Malin and her lawyers stuck to their guns, presenting the same evidence that had gained them victory in the Court of Chancery. For his part, Williams again attempted to defeat his opponents by attacking the credibility of the evidence and the character of the Friend’s followers. He claimed that not only was Sarah Richards’s will tampered with but that the Universal Friends had forged much of the evidence they presented to prove their case. This was a defense born of desperation, and Williams hoped that his accusations would sway things in his favor. However, as in the past, his efforts fell short. The Court of Errors announced their ruling in December, and in a fifteen-to-eight vote, it upheld the Court of Chancery’s verdict. Having played his last card, Elisha Williams finally admitted defeat.57 The Society of Universal Friends emerged victorious in the legal battle over their leader’s estate, but at a considerable price. Decades of suits and countersuits cost them thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees and drained the sect’s

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finances.58 Strapped for cash, the Society shelved plans to build a new meetinghouse in Jerusalem. David Wagener had donated a piece of land for it, and the lumber for the structure had even been cut and hauled to the site. Nevertheless, the group’s fiscal problems forced them to abandon the project.59 More damaging was the toll the litigation took on harmony within the sect. Bitterness replaced fellowship and suspicion overcame trust among the Universal Friends. A strange, even spiteful, entry in the Society’s Death Book reflects the negative feelings generated by the controversy. The passage, dated December 16, 1815, reads, “Solomon Ingraham was suddenly snatch out of time . . . 7 day of the Week, about the time he should have dresst for Meeting: he was buried alive in the bottome of the Pitt which he help’d to dig.” On one level these words simply present a morality tale about a man who should have been observing the Sabbath instead of digging a well and who suffered death as a result of his sin. On another, they are tied to the factionalism that ripped the sect apart, for Solomon Ingraham was one of many who had turned against the Friend. Seen in this light, the entry stood as a reminder of the fate that awaited those who betrayed God’s holy messenger.60 A couple of the Society’s Judases did eventually reconcile with the prophet. Before his death in 1832, Benedict Robinson mended fences with the Friend. In addition, tradition has it that Judge William Potter made peace with the Comforter before his passing in 1814. Nevertheless, the majority of those who turned against the prophet remained firm in their opposition. The Botsfords, Dains, Stones, and several other clans were permanently alienated from the Society. Likewise, James Parker never repented for his actions against the Friend.61 The revolt against the prophet that broke out in the closing years of the eighteenth century marked the end of an era. The Society had forged a way of life that challenged conventional gender norms by providing a space where women could exercise religious authority, become heads of households, and own property—things that were all traditionally confined to men. Male apostates from within the sect rejected all of this and joined together to throw off the Friend’s authority, derail his ministry, and destroy the social order it had created. The primary focus of their assault was an effort to strip the prophet of his substantial land holdings. Here men like James Parker and William Potter sought to recover their patriarchal privilege and position by attempting to divest the Universal Friend of the item revolutionary-era Americans considered the essential ingredient of manhood and republican citizenship: land.

Epilogue

After decades of costly and divisive litigation, the state of New York vindicated the Universal Friend’s rights to the land he held in Jerusalem. Unfortunately the prophet did not live to see it. On July 1, 1819, Jemima Wilkinson, who had allegedly died and been reanimated by a heaven-sent spirit almost forty-three years before, experienced death for a second, and final, time. The entry in the Society’s Death Book that marks the event simply reads, “25 minutes past 2 on the Clock, The Friend went from here.” Although unconfirmed by contemporary sources, one family history claims that just before his death the prophet announced, “My friends I must soon depart—I am going—this night I leave you.”1 So ended the earthly ministry of the Public Universal Friend. While the events and illness that precipitated Jemima Wilkinson’s transformation into a prophet in 1776 remain obscure, the manner in which the Comforter spent the years leading up to his death and the nature of the ailment that struck him down are much clearer. In July 1816, Elizabeth Walker of West Farms, New York, wrote to Rachel Malin concerning the Friend’s failing health following a visit to the prophet. It is likely that Walker was a skilled midwife and healer—the sort of woman most Americans turned to in times of sickness before formally trained male physicians became widely available to ordinary folk. In her letter, Walker reviewed the Friend’s condition: “I consider that discharge from the Feet favorable & should be 189

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encouraged if it again suppurates—it will tend to carry off that offending matter which if not discharged must have produced agonizing pain—or if ascending the stomach proved fatal.” She then outlined a plan of treatment, recommending an “abstimeous Diet & as much exercise as can possibly be taken” and that “the inflamed parts of feet & Legs be folded round with raw cotton made very soft by carding.” Walker also advised that “perspiration should by all means be promoted by waring Flannel next the Body.” Finally, she directed that “a strong solution of salt peter be prepared taking 3 or 4 times a day a wineglass of this Nitre after which immediately drink twice the quantity of old strong cider strongly impregnated with scraped horse-radish & rolled muster seed.” The hope was that this “diaretic” would “carry off the dropsical humors by urine.”2 Walker’s allusion to “dropsical humors” makes it clear that the Friend was suffering from “dropsy” or, in modern medical parlance, edema: the accumulation of fluids beneath the skin and in body cavities. The probable cause of the condition was heart disease, and congestive heart failure is what likely led to the prophet’s death. The years immediately preceding his demise must have been a trying time for the Universal Friend. Ensconced in a spacious home atop a hill overlooking Crooked Lake, the prophet suffered from the effects of a debilitating disease which sapped his strength. During this period, the Comforter had a number of dreams that seemed to foreshadow his death, including one in October 1816 in which “everything was cut short, that the hair was cut short and that the time for siners to Repent was cut short, and that the time was no longer than from midnight to mid day.” In this same year, John L. D. Mathies came to Jerusalem to paint the Friend’s portrait. An artist from Rochester, Mathies was born John Matthews and was the brother of Robert Matthews, one of antebellum America’s more notorious religious visionaries who went by the name “Matthias.” The image Mathies eventually produced captured the prophet in his waning years and presented a visage marked by the effects of age and illness.3 By the end of 1818, the Friend was largely homebound, and Rachel Malin recorded that November 21 was the last time that he led a Sabbathday meeting. Though clearly approaching the end, the Comforter lived long enough to witness the death of some of his most loyal followers. On March 22, 1819, Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer, who had followed the Friend since at least the mid-1780s and served as his scribe before marrying, passed away. Shortly before her death, Ruth wrote a letter to the prophet in which she discussed her failing health and declared, “When shall I see the Friend? O Lord keep me in the house of temptation & tribulation, Let me be fastened to thy cross; rather than loose thy love.” Less than a month after Ruth’s

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Figure 11. Portrait of Jemima Wilkinson/the Public Universal Friend by J.L.D. Mathies, 1816. Wilkinson Collection, Courtesy of the Yates County History Center, Penn Yan, NY.

passing, Jemima Wilkinson’s sister, Patience Potter, also “left time.” The Friend was so infirm by this point that he had to be carried to Patience’s funeral to preach a final public sermon.4 Popular lore has sensationalized the events following the Universal Friend’s death. The prophet’s body lay in state for four days in a coffin that reportedly had a small glass window in it so grieving followers could look on his face. The Friend’s funeral took place on the Sabbath day following his passing, and Wilkinson’s sister, Marcy, marked the occasion with a sermon.

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After the service, members of the Society carried the prophet’s body back to his home and sealed it up in a room in the cellar. This action led to the story that the Universal Friends believed that their leader was going to rise from the dead just as Jesus had. Whether or not this tale has any truth to it is difficult to determine. The rumor that the Friend’s followers expected him to return from the grave was certainly consistent with the notion that the holy messenger was an incarnation of Christ. However, this idea appears to have had far more purchase among the prophet’s critics than members of his sect. Nevertheless, that his disciples kept the Friend’s body entombed in a basement for a long period of time before burying it may point to the fact that at least some of them did not think that a miraculous resurrection was out of the question.5 If the Friend’s followers expected him to return from the dead, then they were not the only sectarian group to entertain such hopes. When Shadrack Ireland died in 1778, his followers, believing his declaration that he would rise again, placed his body in a large box full of lime and stored it in a cellar. They kept it there for nearly a year, until the smell of the decaying corpse grew so bad that they carried Ireland’s remains out one night and surreptitiously buried them in a cornfield. Perhaps the best explanation for their odd behavior is that the Friend’s followers kept his body in a cellar, not in anticipation of a return from the dead, but simply to keep it safe from defilement at the hands of nonbelievers (which was not an unreasonable fear considering the amount of notoriety and hostility the prophet generated during his life) until they could find an opportunity to inconspicuously bury it. Several years later two of the Friend’s male disciples (one of whom was James Brown Jr.) secretly removed his remains from the cellar and, in keeping with Quaker practice, buried them in an unmarked grave. Tradition has it that the families of the two men passed down the location of the prophet’s final resting place to the first born of each generation.6 In the decades following the Comforter’s death, the religious movement he had built continued to decline. The property disputes that had dogged the Universal Friends since they arrived in New York kept eating away at their Society. Equally important was the failure of the prophet and, later, his disciples to institute a more formal doctrine or construct a set of enduring institutions. Once the Friend was dead, there was nothing left to hold the sect together. In contrast, other charismatic prophets in the early republic were fortunate enough to be followed by leaders who effectively institutionalized their ministries. In the wake of Ann Lee’s death, Shaker visionaries James Whittaker, Joseph Meacham, and Lucy Wright transformed her following into a highly structured, dynamic religious movement. Likewise, after the

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murder of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Brigham Young came forward to take the reins of leadership and successfully formalized and expanded the sect.7 In the case of the Universal Friends, the messenger had always been more important than the message. Once the Comforter’s magnetic personage was gone, all believers had left was his memory and the outline of a creed that was not powerful enough to draw in new converts or even keep the children of Society members in the sect once they came of age. Not only were old members drifting away and no new ones taking their place, but those who stuck with the Society were aging and dying off. Rachel Malin’s journals and the group’s Death Book lists the names of many stalwart Friends who passed in the years and decades following the prophet’s death: Sarah Brown “departed this life” on September 21, 1819, at the age of eighty-six; Susannah Spencer on October 6, 1820, at the age of eighty-seven; and Mary Hunt on April 5, 1842, just to name a few.8 In addition to these problems, the Universal Friends continued to face external foes. As had been the case since the Society’s beginnings, opponents kept up a campaign of criticism. Just two years after the prophet’s death, David Hudson, a Geneva lawyer involved in efforts to strip the Friend of his estate, published The History of Jemima Wilkinson, a Preacheress of the Eighteenth Century. The book portrayed Wilkinson as a vile charlatan and her followers as foolish dupes in an effort to shift public opinion against the sect.9 Unfortunately for the Friend’s reputation, his followers refused to publically rebut Hudson’s claims. One of the prophet’s disciples did write a piece entitled “The Love of Money,” which lampooned Hudson’s motives and the accuracy of his book, but never published it. The reason for this curious silence is revealed in a letter William Turpin wrote to Benedict Robinson in April 1822. Turpin discussed “falsehoods published about our dearly beloved Friend,” then offered a reflection that sheds light on the lack of a response. He explained, “I have through Life, truest to my own uniform conduct, to do a way any falsehood that at any time might be attend against me . . . better than for me to have entered into a detail of defense.” In other words, he and his coreligionists believed that actions spoke louder than words and that they should simply follow the path of righteousness instead of engaging in verbal duels with detractors. Turpin concluded his letter with a quote concerning how to deal with scandalmongers that he attributed to George Washington: “If my character cannot bear up against every thing that can be published against it, Let it fall.”10 In spite of these difficulties, many of the Universal Friends maintained their faith and fellowship in the decades following their leader’s death. In his will, the prophet included provisions aimed at assuring the survival of

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the sect. The document, dated February 25, 1818, and signed “The Publick universal Friend,” specified that all of his “earthly property”—his home, lands, livestock, furnishings, and farm implements—were “to be equally and amicably shared” by Rachel and Margaret Malin. More important, the Friend willed that all the present members of my family and Each of them be employed if they please and if employed supported during natural life by the said Rachel and Margaret and when ever any of them become unable to help themselves they are according to such inability Kindly to be taken Care of by the said Rachel and Margaret and my Will is that all poor persons belonging to the society of universal Friend shall receive from the said Rachel & Margaret such assistance comfort & support during natural life as they may need and in Case any either of my family or else where in the society shall turn a way such shall forfeit the provision herein made for them. Simply put, the Friend wanted his estate to serve two ends: first, to provide material security to his “family” (by which he probably meant the sect members who lived with him) as well as indigent members of the Society and, second, to encourage loyalty to the sect by threatening to cut off aid to defectors. It is also worth noting that the will’s opening paragraph and codicil each specify that the Universal Friend and Jemima Wilkinson were the same person. The document’s first sentence denotes it as “the Last will and Testament of the Person Called the Universal Friend . . . who in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy six was called Jemima Wilkinson and ever since that time the Universal Friend.” In a similar vein, the codicil states, “Be it remembered that in order to remove all doubts of the due execution of the foregoing Last will & testament I being the person who before the year one thousand seven hundred & seventy seven was known & called by the name of Jemima Wilkinson but since that time as the Universal Friend.” Yet even after taking such pains, the Friend signed the will with an “X” so that he could avoid writing his original name. Clearly, years of litigation had an impact, and the prophet, who for decades had refused to answer to the name he was born with, compromised this stance in order to avoid future legal troubles.11 With this material backing in place, the Society carried on, and for a time Rachel and Margaret Malin carried out the responsibilities bestowed on them by the prophet. They held meetings in the Friend’s house and provided support to coreligionists who fell on hard times. That the sect continued under the Malins’ leadership is clear from their correspondence with Spencer Hall,

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a devotee of the Friend from Rhode Island who had never moved to New York. In June 1820 he wrote to Rachel and Margaret, stating that though he was not with them in body, he was “Present in Spirit with you and All who Still hold on in faith.” He continued, “I under Stand that you of the friends house hold Due Continue to Live in Peace and harmony. . . . It is my greatest Comfort to hear that you Continue in the Same Love and fellow ship and harmony.” Another letter from Hall to the Malin sisters dated February 6, 1827, makes it clear that the Society of Universal Friends still endured and that Hall must have visited Jerusalem at some point before writing it. He stated, “I want to hear how the Little flock gits along . . . or if any have fallen since my being there, and if so, who they are.” Yet Hall’s letter also confirms that the sect was small—a “Little flock”—and getting smaller as its members drifted away or died.12 Time proved that Margaret and Rachel Malin were not ideal custodians of the Friend’s estate. Instead of finding ways to make the property productive and profitable, the sisters simply sold off portions of it in order to meet expenses. By the time of Margaret’s death in 1842, the sisters had let go of more than seventeen hundred acres. Interestingly, Margaret did not will her portion of the remaining land to her sister but, instead, bequeathed it to James Brown Jr. with the requirement that he continue to use the property for the support of the Society. Her decision may have been a reaction to the poor judgment Rachel demonstrated in managing her share of the estate. Indeed, Rachel’s willingness to ignore the spirit of the Friend’s will became clear after Margaret’s death, and between 1843 and 1845 she distributed thousands of acres of the prophet’s estate to sixteen of her nieces and nephews, some of whom took up residence in Jerusalem in order to enjoy their new property. In the twenty-six deeds involved in these transactions, sixteen were for the token payment of one dollar. In February 1845, Rachel Malin established a fund to provide support for the sect’s poorer members, but by this time most of the Friend’s property as well as $6,000 William Turpin had bequeathed to the Society in 1833 was gone. All that was left was a forty-four acre farm and a mortgage worth about $2,500. As trustee for the fund, James Brown Jr. did what he could with these limited resources to care for the group’s remaining members. After Rachel Malin died on January 2, 1847, her will directed that the portions of the Friend’s estate she still held passed not to the Society, but to her relatives, and the prophet’s home fell into the hands of one of Rachel’s nieces.13 Rachel and Margaret Malin also failed to maintain the vitality of the Universal Friend’s ministry which, to be fair, was already on the wane long before the prophet’s death. They continued to adhere to the Friend’s creed

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but were not able to garner new converts. Likewise, though James Brown Jr. effectively administered the sect’s business affairs, he did not possess the spiritual vision needed to assure its survival. In the end, even Brown’s faith seems to have worn thin. He abandoned the celibate life recommended by the prophet and, in 1844 at the age of sixty-seven, married Anna Marie Clark, a twenty-one-year-old grand-niece of Rachel and Margaret Malin. The couple ended up having four children. Regardless of Brown’s surrender to a carnal life, what was needed was someone who, rather than just managing the Society’s decline, would revitalize it.14 Several would-be Brigham Youngs did show up after the Universal Friend’s death and attempted to assert their leadership over the Society. Michael Barton, a former Quaker from Dutchess County, New York, arrived in Jerusalem sometime around 1830. He quickly insinuated himself as a religious visionary and leading member of the sect but, in doing so, created divisions within it. He apparently won the confidence of Rachel Malin, James Brown Jr., and other Friends but was opposed by Margaret Malin and Society members who aligned themselves with her. Two other competitors for the mantle of leadership, George Clark and Osa Hymes, arrived after Barton. The three men, as Stafford Cleveland put it, “united in engrafting new features on the steady going Society. . . . They claimed to give a fresh inspiration of the Friend’s doctrine, but the results were a notable departure therefrom.” A letter written in 1849 and signed “Michael” might very well be from Michael Barton. If so, it provides an interesting window into the mind of this man. Though it was simply addressed to a “Respected Friend,” the letter’s content makes it clear that it was meant for James Brown Jr. At one point it recounts the author’s physical and spiritual journey to Jerusalem: In 1829 being in the state of Maine a heavenly messenger appeared to me & bid me go west. Next year I started, and stoped on my way nearly one year with the Shakers. And whilst there the same Messanger appeared to me again and bid me again go west in search of the place appointed of the Father for the gathering of the elect. In 1832 on seeing the Friend’s Likeness, I then saw that it was the Friend that twice appeared to me. As certain as the Lord lives, he sent me here, to defend the work of God that has been manifested in this town throu the Friend, and show how it may be carried on to perfection. So, according to Barton, the Universal Friend had appeared in a vision and told him to take up his work. The letter continues, “17 years ago as I waited upon the Lord in the Friends house, he said to me ‘This is my house & I give thee this room, and if my will is done thy house will be in this house and all

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that are fully with thee.’ ” Next, in a clear allusion to the resistance he faced from Margaret Malin and her faction, he wrote, “I have stood ready ever since to make my home there But those who have had the rule there have never seen fit to let it be so.”15 The letter touches on the factor that ultimately cut short the religious careers of Barton, Hymes, and Clark. Margaret Malin and other like-minded Universal Friends feared that these men were more interested in getting their hands on the sect’s property then carrying out the vision of its founding prophet. In light of the decades-long legal battle the Society had fought over the Friend’s estate, such fears were natural. Barton left Jerusalem after Margaret Malin and her allies foiled his bid for leadership. The Universal Friends also drove off Osa Hymes after he had taken up residence in the Friend’s home for several years. Though he gave up efforts to take control of the Society, George Clark eventually married the niece of the Malin sisters who had inherited the Friend’s home and ended up gaining possession of the property he coveted.16 By the late 1840s, the Society of Universal Friends was clearly nearing the end. The leadership vacuum left by the prophet’s death was never filled, its members were dying or falling away, and its financial resources were nearly exhausted. After Rachel Malin’s passing, James Brown Jr. managed the Society’s affairs, and it became more of a mutual aid association doling out funds to its needy members than an active religious sect. Brown continued overseeing the group’s interests until he died on July 30, 1863, effectively ending the existence of the Society. Before and after Brown’s death, the remaining members of the group joined other denominations or shifted their energies away from the sect and toward prominent social and political movements of the antebellum era, including the temperance crusade, abolitionism, and the Anti-Masonic Party. The last surviving member of the Society, Henry Barnes, died in 1874, almost a hundred years after the Public Universal Friend first embarked on his holy mission.17 The Public Universal Friend’s ministry, which spanned the decades during which America fought for its independence from Britain and forged a new republican social order, was a thread in a larger fabric of change. The Revolution witnessed significant social and cultural ferment and involved not just a shift in political institutions and leadership, but a realignment of interpersonal relationships and outlook. This transformation was not just the work of the few but the many, and alongside the Founding Fathers, thousands of ordinary people helped to remake America. With traditional forms of authority swept away or severely disrupted, many common folk took the opportunity to experiment with new religious beliefs and a smaller number

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even reconceived concepts of womanhood and manhood. Not all of these efforts had lasting effects but, collectively, they moved the nation in a new direction. The story of the Society of Universal Friends supports the notion that a positive relationship existed between religious innovation and the American Revolution. Put another way, the reconfiguration of American religious life in the eighteenth century paved the way for the Revolution and, conversely, the social and political upheavals of America’s independence movement helped transform the nation’s religious landscape. Thus, rather than being thought of as an essentially secular epoch sandwiched between two wellknown periods of revivalism—the First and Second Great Awakenings—the Revolution should be understood as a link in a continuous chain of religious activity. The New Light Stir and other religious revivals during the Revolution cannot be understood without looking back to the First Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century. Likewise, the Second Great Awakening, which picked up momentum in the 1790s and continued to roll on into the 1840s, can only be fully put into context with reference to the religious activism of the 1770s and 1780s. Revolutionary-era prophets like the Universal Friend grew out of the first wave of revivals and set the stage for the second. Indeed, the holy messenger helped to light the spiritual fires of western New York that eventually earned it the moniker “the burned-over district” by the mid-nineteenth century. The religious tumult that saw the rise of the Public Universal Friend and other would-be prophets in the latter decades of the eighteenth century was truly revolutionary. It turned its back on over a century of Calvinist orthodoxy (with its emphasis on human frailty and hierarchy) and brought liberating theologies of human free will and universal salvation into the mainstream. In addition, it marked the rise of popular religious movements that competed with and increasingly overturned the power of an elite, educated clergy. One of the most radical developments of the revolutionary era was that common folk no longer looked to their social betters and settled ministers for spiritual insight; instead, they sought their own answers with the help of the Bible and the guidance of charismatic leaders who emerged from their ranks. By century’s end, America’s old, elite-dominated, orthodox Christian order was no longer meeting the spiritual needs of many ordinary and even well-to-do people. In response, they tried to reinvigorate old denominational structures by imbuing them with a new evangelical outlook or, in some cases, by attaching themselves to prophets and plumbing the depths of radical sectarianism. The reconfiguration of American religious life that took place during the revolutionary era continues to resonate to the

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present day. Though popular religious enthusiasm has waxed and waned over time, a person’s right to chart his or her own spiritual course has endured as a central feature of the social order. The revolutionary era also witnessed complex cross-currents of change with regard to gender norms in general and women’s roles in particular. According to the standing narrative, women saw advances in agency and power during the First Great Awakening, only to see them largely slip away during the Revolution. Indeed, many one-time insurgent evangelical groups halted and even reversed women’s gains in leadership and authority as they institutionalized and entered the denominational mainstream by the early nineteenth century.18 The chronicle of the Universal Friend’s ministry complicates this view of the relationship between female empowerment and religion during the Revolution. It demonstrates that there remained rich seams of gender innovation in the Society of Universal Friends, the Shakers, and other sectarian movements that came into being during the late eighteenth century. In addition, the Quakers carried on their tradition of female religious leadership, the practice of women’s social activism, and emphasis on male and female equality throughout the revolutionary period and beyond. These groups provided women with opportunities to gain spiritual authority and use it to enter into public life and advance their standing within their communities. Perceptions of women and the level and nature of women’s activities in the public sphere also went through complex changes during the revolutionary era. Thinkers and writers put forward a new image of women as republican mothers and wives: virtuous beings who would help assure the survival of the republic by helping their sons and husbands become good republican citizens. This vision limited women’s proper roles to the domestic sphere, while at the same time it gave these roles increased symbolic importance. For all that they did to quash the notion of women’s moral and even intellectual inferiority to men, however, these concepts continued to place limits on them. Republican motherhood and wifehood relegated women’s civil involvement to the home and gave them no purchase in the world of formal politics. The Revolution shattered an old system of hierarchy and inequality rooted in ascribed status and wealth only to replace it by the nineteenth century with a new one that was tied to the biological constructs of sex (and race), which made women’s political empowerment or public activism seem unnatural.19 No matter if women found the avenues to political and public life increasingly cut off after the turn of the century, Americans pushed the boundaries of the gendered status quo during the revolutionary era. While not a selfconscious effort to upend the social order, the Universal Friend’s ministry

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provided a space for a renegotiation of what it meant to be a man and a woman. In particular, it created new opportunities for the latter to exercise authority, achieve personal independence, and transcend the traditional roles of wife and mother. The Comforter and his female followers were not alone in such behavior. There is a growing awareness that American women engaged in the life of the new nation, not just as “republican mothers,” but as individuals directly involved in politics and public life. Again, there were limits to this activity: it was mostly relegated to upper-class women, and again, it appears that many of the forces propelling female political activism lost momentum by the early nineteenth century.20 In keeping with this emerging narrative, the prophet and his sect presented a far more radical challenge to the status quo. Jemima Wilkinson called into question the very distinctions between man and woman by taking on a masculine or mixed-gender identity after her rebirth as the Universal Friend. Meanwhile, the holy messenger’s most devoted female disciples contributed to the sect’s defiance of traditional gender roles by following the prophet’s lead in eschewing marriage and motherhood and expanding their roles beyond those traditionally prescribed for women. Thus, in the Society of Universal Friends, women entered public life not just through the profane world of politics, but the sacred realm of religion.

A Note on So u rces

Reconstructing the life and times of the Universal Friend and his disciples involves the analysis of a variety of sources. Though they only produced a couple of published tracts, the sect left behind a wealth of letters, business papers, and diaries. Complementing these documents are writings about the prophet and his adherents penned by commentators outside their Society. Individuals who met the Friend often recorded their observations in private letters and journals or presented them to the public in newspapers, magazines, and books. A third category of sources embraces a variety of official records. Tax assessments, census data, deeds, and court documents all shed light on the Society of Universal Friends. In addition, the legal battles that roiled the sect in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries generated a valuable body of evidence. Besides these primary sources, there are a number of historical studies that proved useful in my research. First and foremost is Herbert A. Wisbey Jr’s. 1964 biography, Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Wisbey was a thorough researcher, and I uncovered few primary sources that he did not already find. Nevertheless, his book is mainly a narrative history and does not overly concern itself with placing the Universal Friend in a wider historical context. Moreover, Wisbey published his study more than a half-century ago and much has changed since then in terms of our understanding of revolutionary-era America. In addition, his work came out before the rise of women’s and gender history and does not address these crucial dimensions of Wilkinson’s story. Besides Wisbey, Stafford Cleveland, a nineteenth-century historian who authored The History and Directory of Yates County (1873), is another important source of information on the Universal Friend and his followers. He includes an entire chapter on the prophet and his ministry and a wealth of genealogical information on those disciples who followed the Friend to New York. Cleveland’s book benefits from the fact that he was able to interview several surviving members of the Society of Universal Friends; however, it lacks much in the way of historical analysis. In other words, the author reports his findings but does not really discuss what they mean. More recently, the Universal Friend has received attention in several historical works. Catherine Brekus provides some valuable insights into Wilkinson’s prophetic career in Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 –1845. Leslie Anne Horowitz’s 2001 dissertation, “Women and Universal Salvation,” also features a substantial amount of material on the Society of Universal Friends. Susan Juster has written several essays that examine the Universal Friend, and her book, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution, includes a discussion of the prophet.1 Juster’s treatment of the Friend is especially insightful and, though my interpretations differ from hers from time to time, most of my analysis compliments her excellent 201

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work. Most recently, Yates County Historian Frances Dumas authored The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier. Though mainly a narrative history, the book contains a trove of primary sources and valuable genealogical information on the Friend’s followers. Research on this project came with its share of frustrations. Stafford Cleveland’s useful history of the Friend suffered from that fact that he, like most nineteenthcentury antiquarians, did not document any of his sources. Likewise, Herbert Wisbey’s book provided only a rudimentary map to materials on the prophet and his sect. Instead of systematically citing his sources, Wisbey only includes an extended bibliographic essay and a very brief set of endnotes. In addition, the years have not been kind to the writings that document the ministry of the Universal Friend, and a number of them have disappeared between the mid-twentieth century and the present. On several occasions, I came across references to documents only to find them missing when I went to find them in the archives. This seems, in part, to be the consequence of an inheritance dispute that resulted in the loss of material relevant to the prophet and his Society. In 1941, Arnold James Potter, a direct descendant of one of the Universal Friend’s leading followers, wrote a history of the Society of Universal Friends drawing on a trunkful of papers from the sect that had come into his possession. Potter’s book ended up as a rambling, nine-hundred-page tome that no publisher wanted to touch. The manuscript still exists and is now in the possession of the Yates County historian’s office. Unfortunately, what has been lost are several of the documents on which Potter based his book. After his death in 1953, the trunk of papers was, by the terms of his will, donated to Cornell University, which microfilmed a portion of them. However, Arnold Potter’s niece, Mary Leah Potter, contested the will and gained possession of the papers. Later, a court ordered that Mary turn the papers over to the Yates County Historical Society. It seems, however, that she kept a number of the documents which have since vanished.2 The Public Universal Friend was, and remains, an enigmatic figure. An avid practitioner of the spoken word, the prophet left behind little written testimony. Dependable sources about Jemima Wilkinson’s life before she became a religious visionary are scarce, and while the historical record certainly improves after Wilkinson won fame (and infamy) for presenting herself as a holy prophet, this widening source base does not necessarily provide a clearer picture. People spilled an abundance of ink describing the Friend, but much of this commentary is built on secondhand information and is highly partisan, with various authors seeking either to condemn or condone Wilkinson’s actions. Rather than allowing an accurate assessment of the prophet, such writings often add layers of misinformation. The most glaring example of this is David Hudson’s book, The History of Jemima Wilkinson, which came out just two years after her death. Hudson was a lawyer deeply involved in litigation against the Friend, and his motive in writing the book was to smear the prophet’s reputation. Unfortunately, Hudson’s book became a frequent stop among early historians who wrote about the Universal Friend, and thus the fabrications and half truths that fill it became lodged in the historical record. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Hearsay, suppositions, and outright misrepresentations often hobble publications about Wilkinson that appeared during her lifetime, but their accessibility has frequently tempted historians to rely on them. Indeed, they are certainly much easier to obtain and analyze than the unpublished and often grammatically tortured writings

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produced by the Society of Universal Friends. These two bodies of evidence often present radically different pictures of the prophet. According to many published accounts, Jemima Wilkinson was a con artist, a lunatic, or a bit of both who preyed on the credulity of her witless converts in order to satisfy her insatiable desire for adulation and wealth. In contrast, the unpublished writings of the Friend’s followers portray the prophet as an earnest and morally upright figure. I have dug deeply into both sets of documents, and this has allowed me to check one against the other in an effort to come to a fuller understanding of the Friend and his ministry. A final challenge is the fact that Jemima Wilkinson and the Society of Universal Friends have become so shrouded in myth that it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction. For instance, there are numerous versions of a story concerning an alleged attempt by the prophet to walk on water. Some are set in New England and others in New York or Pennsylvania, but all portray Wilkinson as a fraud. In one rendition, she asks a crowd of onlookers if they believe that she can walk on water, and they reply with a resounding “yes.” Wilkinson then responds by declaring that since their faith in her was already assured, there was no need to perform a miracle and promptly rode off, much to the disappointment of her audience. In another, she attempts to fool the crowd by walking on a platform that some of her associates had constructed just beneath the water’s surface. This telling of the story ends up with Wilkinson soaking wet and her deception revealed.3 All of the versions have something else in common: there is not a single, credible eyewitness account to back them up. Once in a while it is possible to trace the origins of such tales. For example, several accounts relate how the prophet banished a male disciple to Nova Scotia for several years (the exact time varies in different tellings of the story) for some unnamed offense.4 This bit of lore may well be a distorted version of real events. One of the Universal Friend’s earliest followers, Thomas Hutchinson, had been a Tory during the Revolutionary War and fled New Bedford, Massachusetts (where he had earned the enmity of local Whigs), to take refuge with relatives in British-controlled Nova Scotia before returning and joining the Society of Universal Friends after the war’s end.5 These events may be the kernel of truth behind the aforementioned tales of banishment. Wrestling with these issues repeatedly brought me back to questions central to historical analysis: what do we know and how do we know it? I repeatedly ran into situations where the questions I had about a person or event outran my sources’ ability to answer them. On these occasions, I was left with two choices. I could conclude that the question was beyond my capacity to answer and abandon it or admit to the contingency of the scenarios I came up with. I often chose this latter path, and the preceding pages include words such as likely, possibly, or may have. Some may not approve of this practice, preferring a more conclusive tone; nevertheless, I believe that using these terms is simply an act of honesty that reflects the reality that not much in history—or at least not much worth knowing—is for certain.

Notes

Introduction

1. Rev. Edward Peterson, History of Rhode Island (New York: John S. Taylor, 1853), 166. 2. Ibid., 166. 3. Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 308–9; Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected In a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (New London, CT, 1783), 13. 4. Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island (New York: Henry M. Onderdonk, 1847), 233. The date of Susannah Potter’s death and her funeral are confirmed by the diary of Jeffrey Watson, quoted in Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 48, and in the Journal of Abner Brownell, 1779–87, AAS, 2: 68–72. 5. Many striking events marked the Universal Friend’s prophetic career, but an attempt to resurrect Susannah Potter was probably not among them. All those who wrote about this extraordinary episode did so long after the fact and based their accounts on rumors and hearsay. In contrast, contemporaries who witnessed the young woman’s death and funeral made no mention of any attempt to bring her back to life. For example, another one of the prophet’s followers, Abner Brownell, wrote about Susannah’s passing in his diary but did not mention any efforts to revive her. He may have decided not to record this attempt at a miracle because it ended in failure. What is far more telling, however, is that Brownell made no mention of the episode in his highly critical expose on the Universal Friend, Enthusiastical Errors, which he published in 1783 after he broke with the prophet. It seems unlikely that he would have passed up such an opportunity to illustrate the blasphemous pretentions of his former spiritual guide. 6. My book’s approach places it firmly in the genre of microhistory. Like most microhistories, this study focuses its attention on a single person, but it is not a biography. Jill Lepore provides an excellent explanation of the difference between biography and microhistory, stating, “If biography is largely founded on a belief in the singularity and significance of an individual’s contribution to history, microhistory is founded upon almost the opposite assumption: however singular a person’s life may be, the value of examining it lies in how it serves as an allegory for the culture as a whole.” See Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” JAH 88 (March 2001): 129–44 (quote on 141). Thus I have placed Jemima Wilkinson at the center of my study, not because I think she had an inordinate role in shaping America’s revolutionary era, but because she so effectively mirrors larger trends and changes in the period.

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7. Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 8. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Marini, Radical Sects; John H. Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010). 9. Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756 –1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Alan Taylor, “Nathan Barlow’s Journey: Mysticism and Popular Protest on the Northeastern Frontier,” in Maine in the Early Republic, ed. Charles E. Clark (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988), 100–117; Marjoline Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Kidd, God of Liberty, 50. 10. Though Nathan Hatch describes religious change in revolutionary America in terms of democratization rather than popularization, he does recognize that not all of the religious movements that took root during the era enacted democratic creeds and governing structures. See Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 9 –11. 11. Kidd, The Great Awakening, xix, 321; Marini, Radical Sects; Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm; Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), chapters 7 and 8. 12. Alfred F. Young, Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (New York: Vintage Books, 2005); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750 –1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 13. For a very negative assessment of the Revolution’s impact on women, see Joan Hoff Wilson, “The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution” in The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, ed. Alfred F. Young (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1976), 383–445. The concept of “Republican Motherhood” was first identified and explored in Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash, 148–80. For a more positive assessment of women’s political agency in the early republic, see Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.) 14. Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 –1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), chapter 1; Wigger, Taking Heaven By Storm, chapter 7; Kidd, The Great Awakening, 323; Catherine A. Brekus also notes both the opportunities for female religious authority and the controversy it generated in Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 173–80, 250–57. 15. Historians have included Jemima Wilkinson in this interpretation of the relationship between religion and female empowerment during the Revolution. Susan Juster and Catherine Brekus have asked whether the Universal Friend’s ministry

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significantly advanced women’s religious authority or social standing. Their answer is largely “no.” Both portray the prophet as a rather backward-looking figure. They contend that Wilkinson sidestepped the issue of female religious authority and even set back the concept by denying her very identity as a women and assuming, in Juster’s words, a “masculine persona.” Brekus sees the Friend’s behavior as evidence that female prophets “saw their ‘femininity’ as a burden rather than a blessing.” Juster also points out that Wilkinson preached a rather orthodox religious message and incorporated a “misogynistic tradition” of Christianity into her sermons. See Susan Juster, “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic,” in A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996): 19–37 (for “masculine persona,” see 33, and “misogynistic tradition,” 29); and Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 52–53 (quote on 53). 16. Juster, Disorderly Women; Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims; Janet Moore Lindman, “Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary America,” WMQ 57 (April 2000): 393–416. 17. Thus my interpretation of Jemima Wilkinson’s ministry modifies the more conservative portrayals of her social impact presented in the works of Susan Juster and Catherine Brekus, such as Juster’s “To Slay the Beast,” and Brekus’s, Strangers and Pilgrims. 18. The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787. 19. The view that Jemima Wilkinson was a clever charlatan seems implausible. If Wilkinson’s rebirth as the Public Universal Friend was merely an act, then it is perhaps the longest, most elaborate act of deception in American history. It seems nearly impossible that anyone could keep up the pretense that they were a prophet from God for over forty years without pause or mishap. Even the Friend’s critics could not point to any credible evidence that he for even a moment did not act like what he claimed to be. There is also the question of why, if she was merely acting, Wilkinson embarked on this charade. The answer most commonly given is that she did it to increase her power and wealth. This explanation, however, does not ring true. If Wilkinson was only after money, then she should have lived out her days sponging off of her wealthy New England converts. But this is not what she did; instead, Wilkinson carried out an exhausting ministry to Pennsylvania and, later, abandoned the comforts of the East for the primitive conditions and risks of life on the New York frontier—hardly the behavior of a person who merely aimed at the good life. Moreover, though the Universal Friend eventually lived a very comfortable life in New York, he was also very generous to those in need, not the behavior usually associated with a mere swindler. Members of the Friend’s sect who eventually turned against him accused the prophet of many things, but being a con artist was not one of them. Chapter 1

1. “A Memorandum of the introduction of the fatal fever,” 1776 JWP, CU 357/YCHC. Herbert A. Wisbey Jr. observes that he was not able to find any documentation to verify the claim that a disease known as the Columbus fever stalked Providence and its surrounding communities late in 1776. However, he notes that there was a Continental ship named the Columbus that arrived in Providence in

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that year. The lack of contemporary accounts that confirm the events described in the Friend’s memorandum certainly seems to challenge its credibility. However, no contemporary critic of Wilkinson, who would have been in a position to know if the story was a fabrication, ever leveled this charge against her. See Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 11–12. 2. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 12–14; “A Memorandum of the introduction of that fatal fever,” JWP. 3. Moses Brown to Jeremiah Wilkinson, Feb. 6, 1818, MBP/PAST (Bethesda, MD: American University Publications, 1998), Series V, Part 1, Reel 10, 285–86. 4. “A Memorandum of the introduction of that fatal fever,” JWP. 5. It cannot be said that Jemima was the member of an unremarkable family, for she was not the only child of Jeremiah and Amey Wilkinson who became famous. Her older brother, Jeremiah Jr., won renown as an inventor and developed machines for making hand-cards for carding wool, drawing wire using horse power, and producing cold-cut nails (which ultimately revolutionized building techniques throughout the world). One of Jemima’s other older brothers, Simon, became a well-known mathematician and astronomer. See Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project, 2010), 13; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 206. 6. Most accounts describing Jemima’s early life are, unfortunately, secondhand and of dubious origins. Moreover, all of them were published after her rebirth as the Universal Friend and, thus, are colored by foreknowledge of her prophetic career. Worse still, a number of them make liberal use of the first biography on Jemima Wilkinson, David Hudson’s The History of Jemima Wilkinson, published in 1821. This book is anything but an objective account and has done much to obscure an accurate understanding of Wilkinson’s early life. 7. The vast majority of the accounts of Jemima Wilkinson’s life date her birth to 1752; see, for example, Israel Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America ( Jacksonville, IL: Davis & Penniman, 1869), 93, 414; and Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 3. However, in her history of the Universal Friend, Frances Dumas speculates that the Jemima Wilkinson mentioned in the records of the Smithfield monthly meeting died soon after birth and that perhaps the Jemima who became the Universal Friend was born later (in 1758) and named after her dead sibling, though she does not advance any convincing evidence to support this theory. See Frances Dumas, The Unquiet World, 19–20. 8. There is some debate over whether or not Amey Whipple was Jemima’s mother, but enough evidence points to it to make it a safe bet. It was a common practice for parents to name their children after their own parents, brothers, and sisters, and many of the names of Amey Whipple’s siblings match those of Jemima Wilkinson’s brothers and sisters. In addition, Jemima Wilkinson’s grandmother on her father’s side was also a member of the Whipple family, demonstrating that the Wilkinson and Whipple clans had established a history of supplying each other with marriage partners. Most crucially, the merchant and future abolitionist Moses Brown, who was familiar with the Wilkinson family, identified Amey Whipple as Jemima’s mother in a letter: Moses Brown to T. Eddy, July 5, 1822. MBP/PAST, Series V, Part 1, Reel 10, 984–85.

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9. Herbert A. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 2–4; The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (Providence, RI: National Biographical Publishing, 1881), 58; Mack Thompson, Moses Brown: Reluctant Reformer (Chapel Hill: IEAHC, 1962), 146. Moses Brown also provides some information on Jemima Wilkinson’s parents and background. See Moses Brown to Thomas Eddy, July 5, 1822 MBP/ PAST, and Moses Brown to Jeremiah Wilkinson, Feb. 6, 1818, MBP/PAST, Series V, Part 1, Reel 10, 285–86. 10. Wisbey repeats these characterizations of Jemima’s youth in Pioneer Prophetess, 4–5; however, he does make it clear that this portrayal is largely based on David Hudson’s biased biography. 11. Howard H. Brinton, Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience among Friends (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1972), 37. 12. Lawrence Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 22–23. 13. Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, March 28, April 25, May 30, June 27, July 25, and Aug. 29, 1776, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Men’s Meeting, 1718–1903, LDS, Reel 1308; Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, Feb. 29, April 25, Aug. 29, Sept. 29, Oct. 31, Nov. 1776, and Jan. 30, 1777, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Women’s Meeting, 1775–1818, LDS, Reel 1310; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 7–8. There is no mention in the 1776 Smithfield meeting records of Benjamin Wilkinson being disciplined for his military service; however, considering the fate of his brothers, his dismissal from the Society of Friends seems almost certain and likely took place before the disownment of Stephen and Jeptha. 14. J. William Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 151; Robert V. Wells, “Quaker Marriage Patterns in a Colonial Perspective,” WMQ 29 ( July 1972): 417. 15. William G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630 –1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 1:335–39; Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 131–60; Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 11–36. 16. Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press), xiv–xv, 174–88; McLoughlin, New England Dissent,1: 340–59; Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 12–21; Kidd, God of Liberty, 21–24. For a discussion of the Great Awakening in the South, see Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740 –1790 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982). 17. Thompson, Moses Brown, 145; Caroline Hazard, The Narragansett Friends’ Meeting in the Eighteenth Century (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), 97–98. 18. Marini, Radical Sects, 11, 75; Kidd, The Great Awakening, 315. Though she never established her own religious sect, the devout New Light evangelical Sarah Osborn also experienced a spiritual turning point in her life after hearing Whitefield preach: see Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 120.

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19. Thompson, Moses Brown, 146; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 6–8; Moses Brown to T. Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST; Marini, Radical Sects, 48; Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 –1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 83; Smithfield Monthly Meeting Minutes, Feb. 29, April 25, Aug. 29, Sept. 29, 1776, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Women’s Meeting, LDS, Reel 1310. 20. In a letter to Thomas Eddy, Moses Brown quotes from Dr. Man’s account of Jemima’s illness, see Moses Brown to T. Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST. 21. As Stephen Marini observes in his study of revolutionary New England’s sectarian movements, the people who inspired them “had life histories replete with emotional crisis” and “translated deep psychological, familial, or vocational problems into intensified religious concern.” See Marini, Radical Sects, 80. 22. Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America, 33; Brinton, Quaker Journals, 21; Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700 –1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 65, 69–71, 80. Herbert Wisbey notes the close parallels in the language used to described Margaret Brewster’s story and Jemima Wilkinson’s own description of her birth as the Universal Friend. See Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 5–6. A transcript of Brewster’s testimony can be found in Richard P. Hollowell, The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1887), 193–97. 23. William N. Fenton, ed., “The Journal of James Emlen Kept on a Trip to Canandaigua, New York,” Ethnohistory 12 (autumn 1965): 295; Elijah Brown to Smithfield Monthly Meeting, January 4, 1779, MBP/PAST, Series A, Part 1, Reel 3. 24. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 83; William G. McLoughlin, “Free Love, Immortalism, and Perfectionism in Cumberland, Rhode Island, 1748–1768,” Rhode Island History 33 (1974): 76; Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 139–42. 25. Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 58; Barbara E. Lacey, “The World of Hannah Heaton: The Autobiography of an Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Farm Woman,” WMQ 45 (1988): 283. 26. Historians’ views on this question can be divided into three camps. First, there are those who hold that Wilkinson did present herself as Christ in female form. Susan Juster says that Wilkinson “claimed to be the reincarnation of Christ himself ” and had “messianic ambitions.” See Juster, “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic,” in A Mighty Baptism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 20–21 (first quote), 29; and Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 226–27 (second quote). Leslie Ann Horowitz agrees, arguing that Wilkinson “spoke as Jesus Christ.” See Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation: Promise, Practice and Everyday Life in the Shakers, Universalists, and Universal Society of Friends, 1770–1820” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2001), 168. Some scholars simply conclude that Wilkinson’s views on the matter are unclear. Joel Tibbetts observes that the Friend was evasive about his identity and that his behavior “certainly did not serve to discourage” the belief that he was Christ returned, but he declines to take a hard stand on the issue. See Tibbetts, “Women Who Were Called: A Study of the

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Contributions to American Christianity of Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, Mary Baker Eddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson” (Ph. D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1976), 107–8, 376–77. Finally, other historians (myself included), while certainly aware of the ambiguity that surrounds this point, lean toward the conclusion that Wilkinson, even if she did have Messianic tendencies, ultimately did not pose as Christ returned. Even Horowitz admits that the idea that Wilkinson held herself to be Christ “can more accurately be attributed to her followers than to herself.” See Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 93 (quote) and 180. Charles Lowell Marlin concludes that Wilkinson saw herself, not as Jesus, but “as a latter-day apostle, endowed with divine revelation and special gifts much like those which the original apostles of Christ possessed.” See Marlin, “Jemima Wilkinson: Errant Quaker Devine,” Quaker History 52 (1963): 92. Whitney Cross, also denies that Wilkinson ever laid claim to any sort of divinity in his landmark text, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), 33. Likewise, Herbert Wisbey Jr., one of Wilkinson’s most sensitive and thorough biographers rejects the notion that she believed that her body was possessed by Christ. See Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 20. Finally, Catherine Brekus argues that Wilkinson saw herself, not as Christ, but as the woman in the wilderness mentioned in Revelation. See Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 70. 27. “A Memorandum on the introduction of that fatal fever,” JWP. 28. Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 2:380–82, also see 500; Marquis De Chastellux, Travels in North America In the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782 (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787), 1:28; Reuben Aldridge Guild, Early History of Brown University Including the Life, Times, and Correspondence of President Manning, 1756 –91 (Providence, RI: Reuben Aldridge Guild, 1896), 363. 29. The Freeman’s Journal, February 14, 1787; also see The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787 for similar passages. 30. The passage from Marshall’s Catechism is included in the appendix of David Hudson, Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson (1972; reprint Bath, NY: R. L. Underhill, 1994), 266; the diary of the Rev. William Colbert is included in George Peck, Early Methodism within the Bounds of the Old Genesee Conference (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1860), 126; diary of Rev. Thomas Smith in Peck, Early Methodism, 249–50. 31. Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected In a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (New London, CT: Printed for the author, 1783), 22, 21, 9, 8, and 15. 32. Abner Brownell Journals, 1779–87, 2 vols., AAS. 33. John Lincklaen, Journals of John Lincklaen: Travels in the Years 1791 and 1792 in Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 75; Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2:382 (emphasis in the original); Moses Brown to Elijah Brown, February 12, 1779, MBP/PAST, Series A, Part 1, Reel 3; Brownell, Enthusiastic Errors, 12–13. 34. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3:381. Emphasis in the original. 35. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 20; Moses Brown to Thomas Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST; Declaration of the Society of Universal Friends, Sept. 18, 1783, SAP, 1779–1955, CU 1605, Box 1, Folder B, 177–97; Christopher Marshall quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 93.

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36. The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787. Emphasis in the original. 37. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 14–15; Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family, 416–17. 38. Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family, 417–18; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 16; Fenton, “The Journal of James Emlen,” 295. 39. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 19; Moses Brown to Thomas Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST; Thompson, Moses Brown, 148. 40. Ruth Pritchard quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 18–19. 41. Elijah Brown to Smithfield Monthly Meeting, January 4, 1779, MBP/PAST. 42. Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, May 29, July 21, Aug. 28, and Sept. 25, 1777, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Men’s Meeting, 1718–1903, LDS. 43. Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, March 28, April 25, May 30, June 27, July 25, and Aug. 29, 1776, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Men’s Meeting, 1718–1903, LDS, Reel 1308; Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, Feb. 29, April 25, Aug. 29, Sept. 29, Oct. 31, Nov. 1776, and Jan. 30, 1777, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Women’s Meeting, 1775–1818, LDS, Reel 1310. 44. Smithfield Monthly Meeting minutes, Oct. 29, Nov. 26, and Dec. 31 1778, and April 27 and May 27, 1779, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Women’s Meeting, 1775–1818, LDS; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 8, 15–16; Thompson, Moses Brown, 147. 45. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 39–41; quotations from the petition from William Aldrich to the Rhode Island Assembly is found in John Russell Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (Providence, RI: Cooke, Jackson, 1863), 8:468–69. 46. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2:380–81. 47. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 46–47. 48. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 51, 57–62; reference to South Kingston Quaker Meeting found in Hazard, The Narragansett Friends’ Meeting, 171. 49. Journals of Abner Brownell, AAS, 2:27; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 51, 57–62. 50. Journals of Abner Brownell, AAS, 2:51; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 39–40; Moses Brown to Thomas Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST. Herbert Wisbey compared Some Considerations with the texts by Pennington and Sewel and determined that it was indeed plagiarized from them. See Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 32–33. 51. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 51–55; Public Statement of Trustees of the Society of Universal Friends at East Greenwich, September 18, 1783, SAP, CU 1605. 52. Thompson, Moses Brown, 147; Stephen Marini, Radical Sects, 49; Rev. Pitman quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 54. A copy of the deed from Abraham Dayton (dated July 30, 1784) for the piece of land on which the sect build its New Milford meetinghouse can be found in Samuel Orcutt, History of the Towns of New Milford and Bridgewater, Connecticut, 1703 –1882 (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard, 1882), 325. Chapter 2

1. Hannah Adams, Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects (Boston: Bebes & Sons, 1784), lvii. 2. Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected In a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (London, CT: Printed for the author, 1783), 5–6; Abner Brownell Journals, 1779–87, 1:5, 2:1, AAS.

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3. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 5–6; Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 71–72. 4. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 74. Frances Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Yates, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project, 2012); and Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 2 vols. (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873) contain a wealth of genealogical information and valuable primary documents concerning the Friend’s disciples (with information on their sex, age, marital status, place of residence, and kinship networks) that have allowed me to identify just over three hundred individuals who belonged to the Society of Universal Friends. However, information about the members of the prophet’s sect is often fragmentary and, at times, contradictory, so this figure is certainly open to revision and any statistical analysis of the Universal Friend’s followers should be considered as tentative. 5. For practical reasons, I decided to draw a line between younger household dependents and older, independent individuals. Based on my study of household structure in early America, I chose twenty as the cutoff age, which means that I only include the Friend’s followers who were at or above this age at the time of their conversion. I have identified 162 of these “primary converts” from among the prophet’s 300 or so followers, and it is this subset that forms the basis for my statistical analysis of the Universal Friends. 6. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1: 94–95. 7. Out of the Friend’s primary converts, seventy-seven were male and eightyfive female. Information on the ratio of men to women in 1800 is found in Campbell Gibson, American Demographic History Chartbook: 1790 to 2010, figure 5.3, available at www.demographicchartbook.com. 8. I was only able to narrow down the age at conversion (to either an exact year or decade of life) for 64, or about 40 percent, of the Friend’s 162 primary converts. Thus the data I present on the age breakdown of the prophet’s followers is certainly open to revision. Thirty-one were in their twenties at the time of their conversion, eighteen were in their thirties, eight in their forties, three in their fifties, and two each in their sixties and seventies. 9. Information on the age distribution of the American population in 1800 and 1830 is found in Gibson, American Demographic History Chartbook, figures 5.2 and 5.4—the percentages contained in these figures were adjusted to exclude all those under the age of twenty in order to form a basis of comparison with Jemima Wilkinson’s primary converts. 10. An age profile similar to that of the Universal Friends characterized New Light separatist converts in mid-eighteenth century Connecticut. See Peter S. Onuf, “New Lights in New London: A Group Portrait of the Separatists” WMQ 37 (Oct. 1980): 630–31, 634. 11. I was able to establish the marital status (whether an individual ever married or not) with some confidence for 133 (or 82 percent) of the Friend’s primary converts. Of these, 114 had married at some point in their life, and 19 (14 percent) never married. For information on Potter’s death, see “Death Book of the Society of Universal Friends,” in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 188. 12. Determining the proportion of late-eighteenth-century Americans who lived well into adulthood but who never married is a difficult task since dependable

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data are scarce; however, my estimate of between 5 and 8 percent is reasonable. Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller states that the number of people in early America who never married “was very low—never more than a few percent,” although she notes that “the percent began to rise in the last decades of the eighteenth century.” See Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, A Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780 –1840 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 3. Likewise, in his multigenerational study of the population of Andover, Massachusetts, Philip Greven substantiates Chambers-Schiller’s claim by demonstrating that in the mid-eighteenth century 3.6 percent of men who were known to have lived to at least the age of twenty-five never entered into wedlock. See Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), 207. Considering that the proportion of people remaining single likely grew between the mid- and late-eighteenth century, Greven’s analysis supports a figure of about 5 percent of Americans remaining single in the final decades of the century. Finally, Carl Degler cites a figure of less than 8 percent in At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 152. 13. “Death Book of the Society of Universal Friends,” in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 189; Ibid., 46, 125–26, 207 (he notes that Sarah Negus appears as one of the witnesses on Mingo and Caesar’s manumission papers). Though the Quakers are best known for their early antislavery stance, some evangelical New Lights also came to oppose the practice. See Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 268–75, 284. 14. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 46; Benjamin and Sarah Brown’s manumission certificate for Cloe is included in Charles Rathbone Stark, Groton, Connecticut, 1705– 1905 (Stonington, CT: Palmer Press, 1922), 423–24; Stafford Cleveland, in History and Directory of Yates County, 1:94, mentions that Chloe Towerhill was once a slave belonging to Benjamin Brown. 15. The state in which the Friend’s followers resided when they joined the prophet’s sect is known for 136 of the 162 primary converts I have identified. Of these, 55 came from Connecticut, 47 from Rhode Island, 11 from Massachusetts (for a total of 113, or 83 percent from New England), 22 from Pennsylvania, and 1 from New York. 16. Eight of the Friend’s followers appear on Groton, Connecticut’s, tax roll for 1782. See “Grand List for the Year 1782,” Groton Rate Bills, Box #1, RG62, CSL; East Greenwich 1778 Tax Assessment, East Greenwich Town Records Collection, Mss#195, RIHS. The East Greenwich list is missing several pages, and only two of Wilkinson’s followers who lived in the town appear on the list, making any conclusions drawn from the document highly tentative. 17. Mrs. William Hathaway Jr., A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family (New Bedford, MA: E. Anthony & Sons, 1869), 5–6; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 89, 42. Evidence of Benedict Robinson’s economic standing comes in the form of the extensive land deals he became involved in after following the Universal Friend to New York, which I detail in chapter 5. 18. “Grand List for the Year 1782,” CSL; Stark, Groton, Connecticut, 423–24. 19. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 41–44, 51. Ezra Stiles confirmed that William Potter and his family had become devoted followers of the Friend in an entry into his

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diary dated Oct. 20, 1779. See Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 2:381. 20. “Grand List for the Year 1782,” CSL; Stark, Groton, Connecticut, 423–24; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 61. 21. “Grand List for the Year 1782,” CSL. The support that the Universal Friend provided to poorer members of his sect once they were in New York is more fully addressed in chapters 5 and 6. 22. Wilkinson’s 300 or so disciples shared 49 different surnames: 5 of these were shared by 10 or more converts, while a further 14 were shared by 5 to 9 individuals. Each of the remaining 30 surnames was held by 1 to 5 disciples. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 89, 45; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 210. 23. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 61–62; Abner Brownell Journals, 2: 1–2, AAS. A similar correlation between kinship and religious affiliation existed among New Light separatists: see Onuf, “New Lights in New London,” 363. 24. Stephen Marini argues that those who joined unorthodox religious groups in revolutionary-era New England “were not socially, economically, or politically deviant,” noting that there was not much to distinguish them from their neighbors other than their religious views. He also asserts that, like the Friend’s disciples, New England sectarians were not economically marginalized and, if anything, were slightly wealthier than their more religiously orthodox neighbors. See Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 95–100 (quote on 100). C. C. Goen comes to similar conclusions in his study of New England’s radical New Lights, stating that religious seekers in the region “reflected a fair cross section of the culture in which they existed.” He observes that what separated religious radicals from their orthodox neighbors was not material conditions but “psychological” issues that shaped their religious outlook. See C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740 –1800 (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1962), 191–92. Peter Onuf shows that New Light separates may have been poorer than their neighbors; nevertheless, he argues that spiritual concerns rather than material interests lay at the root of their conversion. See Onuf, “New Lights in New London”: 639–42. 25. J. F. C. Harrison comes to a similar conclusion concerning the connections between personal experience and religious allegiance in his book, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780 –1850 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 11, 218. 26. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 51, 82, 8, 60; Dumas, Unquiet World, 209; Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 6, 36. 27. Abner Brownell Journal, 1:3, AAS; Stark, Groton, Connecticut, 271–72; Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 222–46. 28. Abner Brownell Journal, 1:4, AAS; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 82, 63; Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 8. 29. Dream interpretation is a difficult process, for it involves trying to make sense of the human subconscious. This is challenging enough for modern psychologists who can directly communicate with their subjects; it is exponentially more difficult for historians who are separated from the dreamers they study by time and culture. Nevertheless, dreams represent a valuable source that can be effectively approached

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with a combination of insights drawn from psychology, knowledge of their historical context, and a healthy dose of common sense. Recent clinical studies on dreaming are illuminating. They posit that, unlike Sigmund Freud’s notion that dreams were full of deceptive symbolism meant to both express and at the same time hide socially unacceptable wishes and desires, dreams function as a problem-solving process related to the stresses people face in their daily lives. This newer thinking does help make sense of the dreams and dreaming practices of the Universal Friend and his adherents. See Ross Levin, “Psychoanalytic Theories of the Function of Dreaming: A Review of the Empirical Dream Research,” in Empirical Studies of Psychoanalytic Theories, ed. J. Masling and B. Bornstein (Mahwah, NJ: Analytic Press, 1990), 3: 30–39. Though clinical research informs my approach to dream interpretation, it is also guided by two principles. First, using modern psychological concepts to understand dreams and dreamers of the past easily runs the risk of being anachronistic. Theories of dream interpretation, such as Freud’s or Jung’s, though they claim to be “universal,” are artifacts of their own historical period and need to be used by historians with extreme caution. In other words, dreams from various cultures and time periods need to be understood, at least in part, on their own terms. Second, I contend that, though dreams and the process of dream interpretation are cultural artifacts and therefore vary over time and space, one near-universal trait of dreams is that their content draws on the dreamer’s day-to-day experience. These perspectives are more fully developed in S. R. F. Price, “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus,” Past and Present 111 (November 1986): 3–37 (especially 7–9 and 36); Peter Burke, “The Cultural History of Dreams,” in Varieties of Cultural History, ed. Peter Burke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997): 23–42 (especially 25–27); Susan Sleeper-Smith, “The Dream as a Tool for Historical Research: Reexamining Life in Eighteenth-Century Virginia through the Dreams of a Gentleman: William Byrd, II, 1674–1774,” Dreaming 3 (1993), 49–68; and Levin, “Psychoanalytic Theories of the Function of Dreaming”: 1–53 (especially 10–11, 18–21). I am certainly not the only historian to try their hand at the interpretation of dreams. For example, see Mechal Sobel, Teach Me Dreams: The Search for the Self in the Revolutionary Era (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004); and Susan Sleeper-Smith, “The Dream as a Tool for Historical Research.” Nor am I the only person to analyze the dreams of the Universal Friends: see Leslie Ann Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation: Promise, Practice and Everyday Life in the Shakers, Universalists, and Universal Society of Friends, 1770–1820” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2001), 87, 91–92, and 172–75. 30. Journal of James Hathaway, April 1779-March 1780, JWP, CU 357/YCHC 134; Vision or Dream of M.T. for the Universal Friend, JWP, CU 357/YCHC 133. 31. Sarah Richard’s Dream Book, JWP, CU 357; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 63; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 42. 32. Abner Brownell Journals, 1:1, AAS; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess 51, 61, 82; “Diary of Rev. William Colbert,” in George Peck, Early Methodism within the Bounds of the Old Genesee Conference (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1860), 126; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 205; Samuel Orcutt, History of the Towns of New Milford and Bridgewater, Connecticut, 1703–1882 (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard, 1882), 197; Record Book of Groton’s First Baptists Church, vol. 1, 58–60, CSL.

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33. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 89–91, 186; Marini, Radical Sects, 173; Caroline Hazard, The Narragansett Friends’ Meeting in the Eighteenth Century (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), 97–98, 171. 34. Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 5–6; Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700 –1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 8; J. William Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 54–58; Marietta, Reformation of American Quakerism, 55–56; Arthur J. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980), 81–89, 190. 35. Ruth Prichard quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 30; Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), 35; “Diary of Rev. William Colbert,” in Peck, Early Methodism, 126; Abner Brownell Journals, 1:2, 4, AAS. 36. Stephen Marini presents a similar characterization of New England’s lateeighteenth-century sectarians in Marini, Radical Sects, 95–100. 37. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 7–8. 38. William Carter to Universal Friend, February 25, 1791, JWP, CU 357/ YCHC 97; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 51. 39. Sarah Richards Dream Journal, JWP, CU 357. 40. Marini, Radical Sects, 100, 172–73; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 14. 41. Pritchard quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 30; Abner Brownell Journals, 1:5, AAS; Sarah Richards’s Notebook, JWP, CU 357. In Abner Brownell’s earliest encounters with the Friend, before he joined his sect, he still wrote about the prophet as a “she”; only later, when he became immersed in the Society, did he begin to refer to the Friend as a “he.” 42. “Vision of Desire Miller,” April 12, 1787, JWP, CU 357/YCHC 119; Journal of James Hathaway, December 1779, JWP, CU 357/YCHC 134. 43. Excerpt from David Wagener’s autobiography, Sidney Ayers Papers, 1779– 1955, #1605, Box #1, Newspaper Clippings, 1864–1884, CU; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 7, 9. Susan Juster and Ellen Hartigen-O’Connor also note revolutionaryera religious seekers’ desire for simple, direct spiritual insight in their article, “The ‘Angel Delusion’ of 1806–1811: Frustrations and Fantasy in Northern New England,” JER 22 (autumn 2002): 402. 44. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 14–15. 45. Evidence of Ruth Prichard’s active role within the Society of Universal Friends can be found in a letter she wrote to her fellow sect members on July 20, 1785, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 125; and Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 63. A letter from Sarah Richards to the Universal Friend dated January 10, 1784 also gives clear evidence that she was engaged in independent preaching tours on behalf of the Friend, JWP, CU 357. 46. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 16. 47. Leslie Horowitz makes this important point of comparison between the Shakers and Universal Friends in her dissertation, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 91n97. 48. Harrison, The Second Coming, 228.

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49. Abner Brownell Journal, 1:5–7 (quote on 5), AAS. 50. Ibid., 1:7–8 (quote on 8), 19 (quote), 20–21. 51. Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 27–36 (quotes from 27). 52. Ibid., 27–36 (quotes from 28 and 33). Embedded in Brownell’s narrative are a copy of the letter he sent to Mehitable Smith (31–32) and a deposition he received from the printer about the theft (35). Mehitable Smith responded to Brownell’s accusations in a letter in which she evaded responsibility for any wrongdoing and asked him to explain “what gospel rule I have transgressed and what church order I have broken.” See Mehitable Smith to Abner Brownell, August 30, 1783, JWP, CU 357/YCHC 132. 53. Abner Brownell Journals, 1: 20–21. 54. “Notes on the Universal Friend’s sermons, texts and travels by Ruth Prichard, 1783–85,” JWP CU 357; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 18–19. 55. Abner Brownell Journals, 2: 1–2 (quote on 1). My interpretation here diverges from Leslie Ann Horowitz’s generalization that the decision to join the Shakers, Universalists, and Society of Universal Friends was commonly connected to the breakdown of earlier family and community ties—this might have been true for the former two groups, but does not seem to be the case for the Universal Friends. See Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 107. 56. Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 16–17; Marini, Radical Sects, 50; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 46, 68; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:123, 479, 659–61. 57. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:659–60. Chapter 3

1. The Universal Friend’s Advice, to Those of the Same Religious Society (Philadelphia: Francis Bailey, 1784), in Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 200–201, 197–99, 201–3. 2. Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 66–77; Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 1–3, 158. 3. Marini, Radical Sects, 50–58; Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 88. 4. My thanks to Susan Juster for reminding me about the more backwardlooking aspects of the Friend’s ministry and for suggesting ways to better articulate this idea. 5. Herbert Wisbey, one of Wilkinson’s most sensitive biographers, describes the prophet’s teachings as “an interesting blend of practical, familiar biblical axioms and obscure mysticism” in Pioneer Prophetess, 21. For a similar view of the Friend’s creed, see Joel Tibbetts, “Women Who Were Called: A Study of the Contributions to American Christianity of Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, Mary Baker Eddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson” (Ph. D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1976), 271, 430; Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 3:289; Eugene Parker Chase, ed. and trans., Our Revolutionary Forefathers: the Letters of Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois (New York: Duffield, 1929), 165.

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6. Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected in a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (London, CT: Printed for the author, 1783), 11; The Freeman’s Journal, March 14, 1787. In addition to contemporary accounts, many scholars have noted the links between the Quakers and the Universal Friends; among them are Herbert Wisbey in Pioneer Prophetess, 35, 86–87, and Ruth Bloch in Visionary Republic, 88. 7. Benjamin Randall and the Free Will Baptists as well as a few other radical evangelical groups turned away from the Calvinist concept of predestination. See Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 311–12, 315, 319. For commentary on the Friend’s embrace of the theological concept of free will, see Marini, Radical Sects, 49, 78; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 33; Tibbetts, “Women Who Were Called,” 305; and Leslie Ann Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation: Promise, Practice, and Everyday Life in the Shakers, Universalists, and Universal Society of Friends, 1770–1820” (Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University, 2001), 83. 8. Abner Brownell Journals, 1779–87, 2:3, AAS; Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873), 1: 99 –100. 9. Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” chapter 1 (especially 83); Abner Brownell Journals, 2:4, 16, 2; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, 1793–97, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. Again, Wilkinson was not alone in her emphasis on universal salvation; Caleb Rich and the Universalists voiced similar beliefs. See, Kidd, The Great Awakening, 316. 10. Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 34; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 9. 11. Abner Brownell Journals, 2:3; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP. 12. Thomas Hathaway claimed this and other visions were inspired by reports that the Friend had heard of an earthquake in Naples, Italy, in 1785. See Mrs. William Hathaway, Jr., A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family (New Bedford, MA: E. Anthony & Sons, 1869), 10; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP; The Universal Friend to David Wagener, September 17, 1787, SAP, CU, Box #1, Folder: Newspaper Clippings, 1869–1884. 13. Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP; Abner Brownell Journals, 2:14 (see 4 and 8 for similar passages); Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:100. 14. Elijah Brown to Smithfield Monthly Meeting, January 4, 1779, MBP/PAST (Bethesda, MD: American University Publications, 1998), Series A, Part 1, Reel #3; Abner Brownell Journals, 2:8, 11; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP; Ruth Pritchard’s Diary, YCHC; The Universal Friends’ Advice in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 201; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:100. 15. Howard H. Brinton, Quaker Journals: Varieties of Religious Experience among Friends. (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1972), 109–12; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 28, 35; Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700 –1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 16–17; William J. Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 188. 16. Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 4–29, 55–56; Arthur J. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980), 85–89.

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17. John L. Brooke, “‘The True Spiritual Seed’: Sectarian Religion and the Persistence of the Occult in Eighteenth-Century New England,” in Wonders of the Invisible World, 1600 –1900, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University Press, 1995), 108–22; William G. McLoughlin, “Free Love, Immortalism, and Perfectionism in Cumberland, Rhode Island, 1748–1768,” Rhode Island History 33 (1974): 67–86; Erik R. Seeman, “Sarah Prentice and the Immortalists: Sexuality, Piety, and the Body in Eighteenth-Century New England,” in Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 116–31. 18. Marini, Radical Sects, 48; Smithfield Monthly Meeting Minutes, Feb. 29, April 25, Aug. 29, Sept. 29, 1776, Smithfield Monthly Meeting Records, Women’s Meeting, 1775–1818, LDS, Reel 1310. 19. A note on terminology is in order at this point. Collectively, the eschatological prophecies contained in Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible outline a very complex, multiphased process leading to the end of the world. The prophecies include references to the Christ’s return (the Second Coming), his thousand-year reign over a heavenly kingdom on Earth (the Millennium), his separation of the saved from the damned (the Final Judgment), and his leading an army of the righteous in an epic battle against Satan and his minions (Armageddon). Making things even more complicated, there continues to be a lack of consensus over the order and timing of these events. In addition, throughout history people have emphasized different aspects of the prophecies— such as the more recent focus on the “Rapture” by evangelical Christians—and have developed new terminology to describe the process by which the world will end. For example, the term eschaton was coined by the Protestant theologian Charles Harold Dodd in the mid-1930s to describe the eternal bliss experienced by the righteous remnant of humankind after the Last Judgment and the final defeat of the Devil. In spite of this complex eschatological terminology, and in keeping with popular usage, I often employ the term Apocalypse as a shorthand for the entire process leading to the end of the world. The Universal Friend and his followers may have been millennialists, but they were not biblical scholars and only spoke of the Apocalypse in very general and imprecise terms. I follow their lead and take a similar approach of simplicity over complexity, seeing that my real focus in this study is social history, not theology. Moreover, it strikes me as anachronistic to use terms such as eschaton, seeing that these are twentieth-century inventions that have no place in the eighteenth century. 20. Marini, Radical Sects, 49; Bloch, Visionary Republic, 89–90; Susan Juster, “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic,” in A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 20, 32; Richard Bauman, Let Your Words be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 84. These sources make it clear that the Universal Friend was not the only religious visionary to see the Revolution in a darker millennial light. 21. James West Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 5–10. 22. J. F. C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780 –1850 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 3–5; Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, 3–16; Bloch, Visionary Republic, 6–13.

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23. Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, 213–50 (woman in the wilderness mentioned on 250); Bloch, Visionary Republic, 67, 75–82; Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 301, 305–12. For a comprehensive study of prophecy (millennial or otherwise) on both sides of the Atlantic during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Juster, Doomsayers. 24. Harrison, The Second Coming, 4, 7; Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, 28–33, 259–60; Bloch, Visionary Republic, 106–7, 131. 25. Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 77–78; Bloch, Visionary Republic, 87–88, 90; Marini, Radical Sects, 46–47, 50–58; Douglas L. Winiarski, “Souls Filled with Ravishing Transport: Heavenly Visions and the Radical Awakening in New England,” WMQ 61 ( Jan. 2004): 39. 26. Larson, Daughters of Light, 23; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 12. 27. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 47–48; Bloch, Visionary Republic, 89–90. 28. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 12–13; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, March 14, and March 28, 1787. 29. Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 204, emphasis in the original; “A Memorandum of the introduction of that fatal fever,” JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 133. 30. Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 197–98; Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, The Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London: R. Phillips, 1800), 1: 201–18; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 65, 129–30; John Quincy Adams, “Jemima Wilkinson, the Universal Friend,” JAH 9 (1915): 256. 31. Marini, Radical Sects, 49–50; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 129–31; Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 199–201 (quotes from 199); The Freeman’s Journal, March 14, 1787. For an additional reference to the regularity of silence during worship, see Elijah Brown to Moses Brown, March 18, 1779, MBP/PAST, Series A, Part 1, Reel #3. 32. Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 199; The Freeman’s Journal, March 14, 1787. 33. As the reference to the “outside robe” of the Society’s female members alludes, there were some aspects of their dress that broke with this pattern of restraint, a topic which will be dealt with in the next chapter. 34. Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 199, 200; Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 84–85; Marini, Radical Sects, 50; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 19; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 67; Chase, Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 163. 35. Universal Friend’s Advice, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 198–99. 36. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 35; Larson, Daughters of Light, 25; Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 59–60. For a discussion of Quaker plain speech and speech patterns during worship, see Bauman, Let Your Words be Few, 43–62, 122–26. For a discussion of Quaker dress, see Amelia Mott Gummere, The Quaker: A Study in Costume (1901; reprint New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968).

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37. Morris quote in Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1852), 477; Diary of Rev. Thomas Smith, in George Peck, Early Methodism within the Bounds of the Old Genesee Conference, etc. (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1860), 250; Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 16. For the stories concerning Wilkinson’s alleged affairs, see Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 178–79, 180. 38. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 17. 39. For a discussion of the spiritual significance of celibacy, see Seeman, “Sarah Prentice and the Immortalists,” 122–26; Marini, Radical Sects, 50; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 68; Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 172. 40. Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America, 150–51 ( Joseph Nicholson quoted on 179); Karin A. Wulf, “‘My Dear Liberty’: Quaker Spinsterhood and Female Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” in Women and Freedom in Early America, ed. Larry D. Eldridge (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 83–108; Robert V. Wells, “Quaker Marriage Patterns in a Colonial Perspective,” WMQ 29 ( July 1972): 426–28. 41. This topic is fully explored in chapter 6. 42. Larson, Daughters of Light, 10, 17, 19, 20–21, 31, 63, 143, 149; Jean R. Soderlund, “Women’s Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings, 1680–1760,” WMQ 44 (1987): 722–49; Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 43, 46–47; Joan M. Jenson, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750 –1850 (Yale University Press, 1986), 146–54; Levy, Quakers and the American Family, 78–79. 43. Marietta, Reformation of American Quakerism, 30; Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 50, 73; Mary Maples Dunn, “Latest Light on Women of Light,” in Witness for Change: Quaker Women over Three Centuries, ed. Elisabeth Potts Brown and Susan Mosher Stuard (Rutgers University Press, 1989), 78. 44. Kidd, The Great Awakening, 317; Susan Juster, “’Neither male nor female’: Jemima Wilkinson and the Politics of Gender in Post-Revolutionary America,” in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 359; Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 4–5, 41–42; Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 26, 38, 42; Barbara E. Lacey, “Women and the Great Awakening in Connecticut” (Ph.D. diss. Clark University, 1982), 7, 26–27, 77–78, 131. 45. Juster, Disorderly Women, 2–4 and chapters 4 and 5; Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims, 58–59, 66–68. 46. C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 40–48, 54, 149–51, 159, 164, 201; McLoughlin, “Free Love, Immortalism, and Perfectionism,” 74–78; Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Women and Religion in Early America, 1600–1850 (New York: Routledge, 1999), 91. 47. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 21, 49–50, 45 (quotes about Mrs. Dagget, 50); Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 10; Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2: 381. Moses Brown also mentions Wilkinson’s practice of faith healing in his account of her early years as a prophet. See Moses Brown to Thomas Eddy, July 5, 1822, MBP/PAST, Series V, Part 1, Reel #10 (frames 984–85). For a discussion that places faith healing

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in the wider context of New Light evangelism, see Thomas S. Kidd, “The Healing of Mercy Wheeler: Illness and Miracles among Early American Evangelicals,” WMQ 63 ( Jan. 2006): 149–70. 48. Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, 26; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 12–13, 9. 49. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2: 381; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787. For the use of biblical names by the Friend’s followers, see The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787—this assertion is repeated but not substantiated in Israel Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America ( Jacksonville, IL: Davis & Penniman, 1869), 432; and Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 172. 50. Kelly Bulkeley makes these points and highlights these Biblical texts in An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming (Westport, CT: Preager, 1997), 5–7. 51. Winiarski, “‘Souls Filled with Ravishing Transport,’” 4–46; Susan Juster and Ellen Hartigan-O’Conner, “The ‘Angel Delusion’ of 1806–1811: Frustration and Fantasy in Northern New England,” JER 22 (autumn 2002): 375–404; Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 222, 238–39; Barbara E. Lacey, “The World of Hannah Heaton: The Autobiography of an Eighteenth-Century Connecticut Farm Women,” WMQ 45 (1988): 286–87; Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 182; Kidd, The Great Awakening, 131–33; Seeman, “Sarah Prentice and the Immortalists,” 119. 52. Brinton, Quaker Journals, 93–106; Marietta, Reformation of American Quakerism, 95; Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America, 23, 51; Larson, Daughters of Light, 18–19. For an extended study of Quaker dreaming, see Carla Gerona, Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture (Charlotte: University of Virginia Press, 2004). 53. Rachel Malin’s Notebook, JWP, CU 357; Sarah Richards’s Notebook, JWP, CU 357. 54. Vision of Desire Miller, April 12, 1787, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 119; Susannah Potter’s Dreams, Dec. 19, 1779–Jan. 3, 1780, JWP, CU 357. 55. Sarah Richard’s Notebooks, JWP; “Item written in the margins of a newspaper,” Oct. 11, 1849 (author unknown), JWP, CU 357; Susannah Potter’s Dreams, JWP. 56. Sarah Richards Dream Journal, JWP, CU 357. 57. Journal of James Hathaway, April 1779–March 1780, JWP CU 357 / YCHC 134. 58. Nathan O. Hatch proposes that the revolutionary era witnessed such changes in America’s religious landscape in The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 59. Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 13–15, 99–100; Larson, Daughters of Light, 11–12; Erik R. Seeman, “‘It is Better to Marry than to Burn’: Anglo-American Attitudes toward Celibacy, 1600–1800,” Journal of Family History 24 (Oct. 1999): 398, 405. Chapter 4

1. Elaine Forman Crane, ed., The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991) 1: 404. 2. For a good narrative overview of the Universal Friend’s Pennsylvania ministry, see Herbert A. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 77–96.

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3. Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700 –1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 111, n347; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); David Paul Nord, “A Republican Literature: Magazine Reading and Readers in Late-Eighteenth Century New York,” in Reading in America: Literature and Social History, ed. Cathy N. Davidson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 114–39; Christopher Grasso, A Speaking Aristocracy: Transforming Public Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the OIEAHC, 1999), quote on 4. 4. Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University Press of Pennsylvania, 2003), 232–36; Susan Juster, “’Neither male nor female’: Jemima Wilkinson and the Politics of Gender in PostRevolutionary America,” in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 365. 5. For two works that explore this point, see Karen Kupperman, “Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation in the Early Years of Colonization,” WMQ 54 ( Jan. 1997): 193–228; and Karin Kalvert, “The Function of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 252–83. 6. Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the OIEAHC, 2006), 225–35; As Susan Juster reminds us, Jemima Wilkinson’s debut as a figure in the nation’s print media intersected with “republican anxieties about the precarious nature of civic and familial bonds in a world of uncertain sexual boundaries.” See Juster, “‘Neither male nor female,’” 360–61, 362 (quote) and 370–71. 7. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 7–8, 31, 105; Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, “Nursing Fathers and Brides of Christ,” in A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America, ed. Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 135; Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 113, 135, 211; Susan Juster, “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic,” in A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 23. 8. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 77–78. 9. Ibid., 79–84; The Freeman’s Journal, March 14, 1787; Christopher Marshall Diaries, Oct. 6–10, 1782, Box 1, Folder 1, HSP. 10. Marquis De Chestellux, Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781, and 1782 (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787), 1:28; Eugene Parker Chase, ed. and trans., Our Revolutionary Forefathers: the Letters of Francois Marquis de Barbe-Marbois (New York: Duffield, 1929), 162–66 (quote on 164–65). 11. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 83; All quotations from David Wagener are from excerpts from Wagener’s autobiography found in SAP, Box 1, Folder: Newspaper Clippings, 1869–84, CU 1605.

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12. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 84–85; Christopher Marshall Diaries, entries for August 1784, Vol. 6, Diary H (1783–85), HSP; Jacob Cox Parsons, ed., Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer of Philadelphia, 1765–1798 (Philadelphia: Wm. F. Fell, 1893), 65. 13. The Universal Friend’s Advice was first advertised for sale in November 1784 (see The Freeman’s Journal, Nov. 24, 1784); Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 84–86; Charles Wetherill, History of the Religious Society of Friends Called by Some the Free Quakers, in the City of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Printed for the Society, 1894); Jack D. Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–1783 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 246; Christopher Marshall Diaries, Feb. 26, 1785, Vol. 6, Diary H (1783–85), HSP. 14. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 85–86 (Wisbey asserts that the Friend spent September and the first week of October touring New Jersey); quote from Wagener’s autobiography in SAP, CU. 15. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 87–88; Christopher Marshall Diaries, September 7, 1784, and October 2, 1785, Vol. 6, Diary H (1783–85), HSP; Sarah Richards’s Day Book, 1786, JWP, CU 357. 16. Sarah Richards to The Universal Friend, Oct. 21, 1787, JWP, CU 357; Christopher Marshall Diaries, January 16 and February 19, 1787, Box 1, Folder 4, HSP; Sarah Richards to the Universal Friend, Oct. 24, 1787, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; the Universal Friend to Sarah Richards, March 11, 1787, JWP CU 357 / YCHC. 17. Articles concerning the Universal Friends appear in The Freeman’s Journal on Feb. 14, March 14, March 28, Aug. 22, and Aug. 29, 1787; in the American Museum in February, March, April and May, 1787 (all of these were reprints of materials that first appeared in The Freeman’s Journal); and in The Pennsylvania Gazette on March 28 and April 4, 1787. Universal Friend to Sarah Richards, March 11, 1787, JWP,YCHC. 18. Benedict Robinson’s diary, November 1787, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 92. A resident of New Haven, the Reverend Ezra Stiles was curious about the prophet and invited him to breakfast. In a written reply, the Friend declined, saying that he had a long journey before him and thought it “most expedient to go on as fast as possible.” See Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 3:289–90. 19. Christopher Marshall Diaries, Nov. 16, 1788, Box 1, Folder 5, HSP; Parsons, Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 145. 20. Christopher Marshall Dairies, February 6, 1789, Box 1, Folder 6, HSP. 21. Account of “Lang Syne,” Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, July 24, 1828, in John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in the Olden Time (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1870), 1: 553–54. 22. Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island (New York: Henry M. Onderdonk, 1847), 234; Mrs. William Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family . . . with Incidents in the Life of Jemima Wilkinson (New Bedford: E. Anthony and Sons, 1869), 20. 23. Chase, Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 164; Jonathan Evans, ed. “A Journal of the Life, Travels, and Religious Labours of William Savery,” in The Friends’ Library (Philadelphia: Joseph Rakestraw, 1837), 1: 351; T.C., “A Ride to Niagara,” The Port Folio 4 (Sept. 1810): 235.

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24. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3: 289–90; Parsons, Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 65, 145; “Lang Syne,” Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 1: 545; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787. 25. Karin Calvert, “The Function of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, 252–83 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994): 252–84; Karin Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670–1810,” WMQ 39 ( Jan. 1982): 87–113; Allan Kulikoff, “The Political Economy of Military Service in Revolutionary Virginia,” in Kulikoff, The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 152–81. 26. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2: 382, 3:290; Evans, ed., “Journal of . . . William Savery,” 351; The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787. 27. “Lang Syne” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 1: 553–54; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; Parsons, Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 65; Chase, Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 164. 28. The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787. 29. Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 20; “A Ride to Niagara,” The Port Folio, 235; Parsons, Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 145. 30. For an insightful discussion of Quaker dress, see Amelia Mott Gummere, The Quaker: A Study in Costume (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968); The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 19. 31. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3:290; Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, 234; Chase, Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 163; “Memoir of Thomas Morris,” in Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1852), 478 (en bon point means “plumpness”). 32. The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 1: 553–54; Chase, ed., Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 163–64. 33. “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 1: 553–54. For images of eighteenth-century, upper-class American women with uncovered heads and elaborate hair styles, see Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture,” 98, 104, 107. 34. Parsons, Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 145; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 554. 35. Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, 234; Chase, ed., Our Revolutionary Forefathers, 165; Parsons, Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 145; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 554. 36. Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, 234; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 554. 37. Christopher Marshall Diaries, May 20, 1788, Box 1, Folder 5, HSP; Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected In a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (London, CT: Printed for Author, 1783), 7; Israel Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America ( Jacksonville, IL: Davis & Penniman, 1869), 429. 38. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3:289; “Memoir of Thomas Morris,” in Turner, History of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, 478; “A Ride to Niagara,” The Port Folio, 236.

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39. Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760 –1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the IEAHC, 1990), 136; William J. Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 36–37; Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3:289. Richard Bauman discusses seventeenth-century Quaker traditions of preaching that remained in force by the late eighteenth century: see Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence among Seventeenth-Century Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 73–79. 40. Marshall quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 93; The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787; “Lang Syne,” in Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, 554. 41. The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787; for a study of the gendering of speech in early America, see Jane Kamensky, “Talk like a Man: Speech, Power, and Masculinity in Early New England,” Gender and History 8 (April 1996): 22–47. 42. Hathaway, A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family, 20; Pittsburgh Mercury, 1819, in David Hudson, Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson (New York: AMS Press, 1972), 278; Parsons, Extracts from the Diary of Jacob Hiltzeimer, 66. 43. Chastellux, Travels in North America, 1:28–29. I concur with Herbert Wisbey’s assumption that the young men of which De Chestellux spoke must have been Turpin and Arnold Potter: see Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 81. Susan Juster also makes this point concerning how observers characterized the Friend’s male followers: see “To Slay the Beast,” 30–31. 44. Phyllis Mack explains, “If Quaker women prophets could be said to resemble any cultural archetype, it was that of the aggressive, male Old Testament hero.” See “Gender and Spirituality in Early English Quakerism, 1650–1665,” in Witness for Change: Quaker Women over Three Centuries, ed. Elisabeth Potts Brown and Susan Mosher Stuard (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 34 and 43–44. 45. The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787. 46. Chastellux, Travels in North America, 1:28. 47. Evans, ed., “A Journal of . . . William Savery,” 1:351; The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787; Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America, 432. 48. Quote from Some Considerations found in Juster, “’Neither male nor female’,” 361; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 18; Sarah Richards to the Universal Friend, Oct. 21, 1787, JWP, CU 357; Deposition of Eliza Malin, Sept. 26, 1799, Jemima Wilkinson Testimony, County Court Records, 1799, A M21-070, OCA—the italics in the quotes from these sources are mine. Eliza Malin, who related Elizabeth Carr’s words, was hostile to the Society by the time she gave this testimony; however, the details she provides on how disciples addressed the Friend are consistent with other accounts. 49. Both Erik R. Seeman and Carol Brekus addressed the implications of celibacy. See Seeman, “‘It is Better to Marry than to Burn’: Anglo-American Attitudes toward Celibacy, 1600–1800,” Journal of Family History 24 (Oct. 1999): 397–419 (esp. 405); and Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 –1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 80; The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787. 50. The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787; Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 20. 51. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 19–20. 52. Ibid., 19–20.

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53. Dexter, Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 2: 511; The Freeman’s Journal, March 28, 1787. 54. Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors, 11. 55. The Freeman’s Journal, Feb. 14, 1787. Susan Juster advances this same gendered interpretation of the commentary on James Parker in “Neither male nor female,” 364. Though it deals with the seventeenth century rather than the eighteenth, Carol F. Karlsen provides an excellent discussion of the feminization of particular vices in Devil in the Shape of a Women: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (W. W. Norton, 1987), 117–52. 56. The Freeman’s Journal, March 14, 1787; “A Ride to Niagara,” The Portfolio, 237. 57. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 89–90. The version of events presented in this paragraph and the three that follow is drawn from The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 28, 1787. 58. The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 28, 1787, and April 4, 1787. 59. Ibid., March 28, 1787, and April 4, 1787; The Freeman’s Journal, Sept. 5, 1787. 60. The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 28, 1787, and April 4, 1787; The Freeman’s Journal, Sept. 5, 1787. 61. The Pennsylvania Gazette, March 28, 1787; Pittsburgh Mercury, 1819, in Hudson, Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson, 278–281. 62. The Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 22, 1787. 63. Both Abigail Dayton and Sarah Wilson identified Rachel Malin and Anna Styer as being in bed with Wilson. See The Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 22, 1787, and Sept. 5, 1787. 64. Christopher Marshall Diaries, May 20, 1788, HSP; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 90. 65. Sarah Richards makes repeated references to making visits to George Wilson’s home and of receiving visits from members of the Wilson family in 1786. See Sarah Richards’s Day Book, 1786, JWP; Frances Dumas claims that the Friend visited the home of George Wilson in 1784: see The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project, 2010), 71. 66. An account of Mary Wilson’s case appeared over thirty years after the events it described in the Pittsburgh Mercury in 1819. The author claimed to have been a neighbor to the Wilson family and said that Sarah “forsook her husband and children” in order to follow the Friend. It is very likely that the writer was making a reference to Sarah’s sister, Mary, since Sarah was not married at the time and it is clear from other sources that Mary was the one who temporarily left her family to follow the prophet. See “Two communications from the Pittsburgh Mercury, 1819,” in Hudson, Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson, 278; Sarah Richards to the Universal Friend, Oct. 21, 1787, JWP. 67. The Freeman’s Journal, Aug. 29, 1787. 68. Ibid., Aug. 29, 1787. 69. Ibid., Feb. 14 and March 14, 1787. 70. Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” WMQ 44 (Oct. 1987): 689–721; Donna R. Bontatibus, The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation: A Call for Socio-Political Reform (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999); Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution of the Word: The Rise of the Novel

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in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 185–232; Rodney Hessinger, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780 –1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 23–27. Chapter 5

1. “Diary of Ruth Pritchard’s Journey to the Friend’s Settlement,” YCHC 75.56.1-L. 2. Michael A. Bellesiles, Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993); Paul B. Moyer, Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760 –1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Alan Taylor, William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 3. Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 97–99, 108; Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 99. 4. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 100–101; Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1852), 155; Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 2 vols. (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873), 1:42–43. 5. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 94–96, 98; Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 7–8. 6. The Universal Friend to David Wagener, September 17, 1787, SAP, Box 1, Folder: Newspaper Clippings, 1869–1884, CU 1605; Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 3:334. 7. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 96. 8. Alan Taylor, “The Divided Ground: Upper Canada, New York, and the Iroquois Six Nations, 1783–1815,” JER 22 (spring 2002): 55–75. 9. Taylor, The Divided Ground, 142–66; William Herbert Siles, “A Vision of Wealth: Speculators and Settlers in the Genesee Country of New York, 1788–1800 (Ph.D. Diss., University of Massachusetts, 1978), 15–16; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County 1:17–18. 10. Siles, “A Vision of Wealth,” 7–8; Moyer, Wild Yankees, 105–7; Taylor, William Cooper’s Town, 89–95; David Maldwyn Ellis, “Rise of the Empire State, 1790–1820,” New York History 56 ( Jan. 1975): 5–28; and Ellis, “The Yankee Invasion of New York, 1783–1850,” New York History 32 ( Jan. 1951): 4–8. 11. James Parker to Abraham Dayton, April 14, 1788, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 120. 12. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 101–2 (Parker quote on 102). The Universal Friends’ plans for settlement, as well as the religious and material motives behind them, have much in common with the process and principles of town founding in seventeenth-century New England. See John Frederick Martin, Profits in the

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Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1991). 13. Siles, “A Vision of Wealth,” 40; Frances Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project, 2010), 105. 14. Taylor, The Divided Ground, 170–73; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 103; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 106, 109–10; Siles, “A Vision of Wealth,” 35–37. 15. Taylor, The Divided Ground, 176–78. Fran Dumas points out that a letter from the Universal Friend to Sarah Richards dated Dec. 17, 1787, makes it clear that the Lessees and Phelps and Gorham were in contact with one another before the end of 1787. See Dumas, The Unquiet World, 121. 16. Though he later tried to portray himself as the innocent victim of unscrupulous speculators, Parker and other prominent members of the Society were involved with the New Yorkers almost from the start. In December 1787, James Parker, Arnold Potter, Thomas Hathaway Sr., and Benedict Robinson explored the possibility of obtaining land through the Lessees, and all these men eventually became stockholders in the company. Parker seems to have taken the lead in the Society’s dealings with the Lessees. A document dated April 25, 1788, provides insight into Parker’s connections with the land speculators. It refers to a petition from Parker “in behalf of himself and several others, his associates who have interested themselves in three full Shares and a Quarter of the Lands claimed by this Company,” and thus demonstrates that he as well as other members of the Friend’s sect were shareholders in the Lessees’ company. See Dumas, The Unquiet World, 124–25 (response by Lessees to James Parker’s petition, April 25, 1788, included on 125). Other prominent Universal Friends also made their own private purchases of land. In a letter from the Universal Friend to Sarah Richards, the prophet stated: “B. A. [Benedict Arnold] Potter came home in the evening, he just returned out of the New Country. . . . hath been also with the [Lessee’s] agents at New Geneva also with Phelps & Gorham & says he has engaged a township west joining to that Friend Parker has located.” From this letter it is clear that Potter was involved with both the Lessees and Phelps-Gorham. See the Universal Friend to Sarah Richards, Dec. 17, 1788, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 115. 17. Taylor, The Divided Ground, 188–94. Oliver Phelps informed Benedict Robinson of the collapse of the Lessees’ company in a letter in which he stated that he wanted the Universal Friends to settle on his lands and was willing to sell them a township if they could come up with the money for it. See Oliver Phelps to Benedict Robinson, March 19, 1789, SAP, Box 1, Folder: Newspaper Clippings, 1869–1884, CU 1605. 18. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 105, Parker’s petition is quoted on 102–3; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 126. In addition to losing most of the 14,000 acres the Lessees had conveyed to the Society, the Universal Friends lost an additional 28,000 acres contained in their company shares that had not yet been located. The ₤800 Parker mentioned in his petition to Governor Clinton was a combination of the initial one-third down payment of ₤270 he made on the shares purchased from the Lessees in April 1788 along with the balance of the payment Parker made at some later date. 19. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 106–7 (Parker’s petition quoted on 106).

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20. Ibid., 114–17 (Parker’s petition quoted on 114); “Records of votes concerning land in gore, Oct. 27, 1791, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 87; William Potter and Thomas Hathaway, bond, Oct. 28, 1791, JWP, CU 357; Deed from State of New York to James Parker, William Potter, and Thomas Hathaway, Oct. 10, 1792 in Dumas, The Unquiet World, 157–58 (quote on 158). 21. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 106-07-115; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 105–6. Frances Dumas sees the problem with the first Preemption Line as a product of faulty instruments, while Herbert Wisbey portrays it as an act of fraud perpetrated by the Lessees. It is Stafford Cleveland who points out that one of Maxwell’s assistants was John Jenkins, a man with ties to the Lessees’ land schemes and new state plot. See Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1: 23–24. 22. Siles, “A Vision of Wealth,” 108–17; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 126, 154; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 113; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 29. 23. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 117–18; for the resolves of the three meetings, see “Remarks on the Evidence in the Case . . . ,” May 20–Aug. 15, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 186. 24. Dumas, The Unquiet World, 128, 130; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 109, 117–18. A list of those who obtained land (and how much money they paid into the joint purchase) can be found in an undated document entitled, “Land in the Gore,” JWP, CU 357 / YCHC 10; information on who did, and did not, receive land in the patent obtained from New York can also be found in “Remarks on the Evidence in the Case . . .” May 20–Aug. 15, 1793, JWP. 25. Deposition of William Carter (undated), YCHC. Insight into this land dispute among the Friends can also be found in “Remarks on the authenticated Documents,” Jan. 20, 1798, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 26. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 116. 27. Ibid., 105–6, 210; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 133–34. 28. Moyer, Wild Yankees, 160–62; Michael Williams, Americans and their Forests: A Historical Geography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 58–62, 67–75, 94–100, 121–22, 139 (Hall quoted on 121); Charles Brooks, Frontier Settlement and Market Revolution: The Holland Land Purchase (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 60–74. 29. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 107; Quote from Sarah Richards’s journal in Dumas, The Unquiet World, 143. 30. Universal Friend to James Parker, Sept. 2, 1788, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; James Parker to Universal Friend, Sept. 17, 1788, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 31. Dumas, The Unquiet World, 138; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:44–45, 124. 32. Taylor, The Divided Ground, 196–97; Moyer, Wild Yankees, 169–70; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:46. 33. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 109–10; “Diary of Ruth Pritchard’s Journey to the Friend’s Settlement,” YCHC; Sarah Richards’s Notebook, 1789–1803, JWP, CU 357. 34. Sarah Richards to the Universal Friend, May 23, 1790, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; James Parker to Sarah Richards, July 5, 1790, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Memorandum of Sarah Richards, June 1, 1791, in Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:51.

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35. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 111–13; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:32–33, 48, 66, 126 (Barnes quote on 66 and Smith quote on 126). Richard Smith, James Parker, and Abraham Dayton were the original owners of the mills and the site eventually became known as “Smith’s Mills.” When Dayton later moved to Canada in 1791, he sold his interest in the mills to David Wagener. See Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 116. 36. Moyer, Wild Yankees, 162; Brooks, Frontier Settlement and Market Revolution, 60–74. 37. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:32–33; John Lincklaen, Journals of John Lincklaen (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 75. 38. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 117, 126–27; Universal Friend to James Parker, Sept. 2, 1788, JWP; Sarah Richards to Ruth Pritchard, March 12, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 39. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 119–20, 211 (Wisbey mentions the purchase price for the town of Jerusalem as being $10,320; this is incorrect, it was $4,320); Diary of the exploration of the 2nd/7th Township, December 1789, JWP, CU 357; Benedict Robinson to Sarah Richards, Dec. 1789, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1: 61, 62–63—Cleveland lists the correct purchase price for Jerusalem. 40. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:26–27, 61, 452–53; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 121, 211–12; Deed, Thomas Hathaway to William Carter, Aug. 4, 1795, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. Hathaway and Robinson purchased Jerusalem in 1789 for $4,320, or just over 18 cents an acre, but they gave 7,000 acres in a two-mile wide strip on the south side of the town back to Phelps and Gorham in 1791. In June 1793 Robinson conveyed all of his remaining holdings in Jerusalem except for 550 acres to William Carter for £1,000, and in August 1795, Hathaway gave up his lands in the town to Carter for £6,000 with the exception of 3,690 acres. Carter later gave back 4,000 acres on the west side of the town to the proprietors of the Massachusetts’s Preemption who were, by then, the Pulteney Associates. 41. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:64, 51–53 (excerpts from Sarah Richards’s notebook dated July 19, 1791, Jan 5, 1792, May 2, 1793, and June 1, 1793), 75 (memorandums from Sarah Richards to Ruth Pritchard, March 12, 1793 and June 3, 1793); Receipt, Benedict Robinson to Sarah Richards, Feb. 24, 179, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Receipt, B. Robinson to S. Richards, July 19, 1791, JWP, CU 357; Receipt, Thomas Hathaway to S. Richards, July 25, 1791, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Agreement between B. Robinson and S. Richards, January 5, 1792, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Deed, Benedict Robinson to S. Richards, Jan. 5, 1792, JWP, CU 357; Deed, T. Hathaway to S. Richards, June 1, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Deed James Hathaway to R. Malin, July 30, 1794, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Deed, William Carter to Rachel Malin, July 14, 1795, JWP, CU 357. All told, the Universal Friend ended up owning the following lots in Jerusalem: 21 through 28, 45 through 47, and 50 through 52. 42. Death Book of the Society of Universal Friends, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 190. 43. Ibid., 191; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 122–23, 125; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:52, 65.

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44. Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, March 1793–May 1797, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:65, 67, 448; Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels Through the United States of North America, The Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 2d ed., 4 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1800), 1:206. 45. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 124–26; Universal Friend to Christopher Marshall, June 1795, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 46. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:66; Ruth (Pritchard) Spencer’s Notebook, JWP. 47. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:454–55, 462–63, 575; “Names of the first Settlers in the Town of Jerusalem,” SAP, Box 1, Folder A, CU 1605. Some additional single women who moved to Jerusalem were Eunice Beard, Hannah Baldwin, and Phebe Cogswell. Chapter 6

1. Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, The Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada in the Years 1795, 1796 and 1797, 2 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1799), 1:205–9. 2. Ibid., 1:206, 210. 3. In her study of the Friend’s enclave, Leslie Ann Horowitz (though she observes that the sect upheld the concept of private property and did not seek to undermine the nuclear family) asserts that those who joined the Society “played a fundamental role in redefining and restructuring their families and communities, in theory as well as in practice.” See “Women and Universal Salvation: Promise, Practice, and Everyday Life in the Shakers, Universalists, and Universal Society of Friends, 1770–1820” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2001), 105 (quote), 165. 4. Paul B. Moyer, Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 108, 110–11 (Liancourt quoted on 110); Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 2 vols. (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873), 1:96, 662–63, 2:1167; Mrs. William Hathaway Jr., A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family (New Bedford, MA: E. Anthony & Sons, 1869), 16. 5. Jonathan Evans, ed., “A Journal of the Life, Travels and Religious Labours of William Savery,” in The Friend’s Library: Comprising Journals, Doctrinal Treatises, and Other Writings of Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Philadelphia: Joseph Rakestraw, 1837), 1:351; Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester: William Alling, 1852), 158. 6. Federal Census of 1800, New York, Ontario County, Districts of Jerusalem, Phelps, and Seneca. The Universal Friends do not appear in the 1790 Federal Census for New York because the census taker for Montgomery County thought the census taker for Ontario County would cover the territory on the west side of Seneca Lake and vice versa, meaning that the Friend’s Settlement was skipped in the confusion. However, the census of 1800 provides valuable insights into life in the Universal Friends’ community. 7. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:659–600; 94–96; Federal Census of 1800, New York, Ontario County, District of Jerusalem.

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8. Federal Census of 1800, New York, Ontario County, Jerusalem. For some discussion of the age at which men in early America married, see Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 7–8; and Henry A. Gemery, “The White Population of the Colonial United States, 1607–1790,” in A Population History of North America, ed. Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 153. 9. Federal Census of 1800, New York, Ontario County, Phelps and Seneca. 10. Ibid., Jerusalem Township—the exact figure for the number of persons in each of the Universal Friends’ households was 4.2, and for households not connected to the prophet it was 5.6. The national average was 5.4 persons per household. See Susan B. Carter et al., eds., Historical Statistics of the United States: Earliest Times to the Present, 5 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1:29. 11. The 1800 census divides people into age categories, making it possible to roughly chart the number of young people per household. However, it does not specify blood ties between household residents. In other words, the census can show that there were four people under the age of sixteen living in a household, but it does not specify if they were the children of the household head. Census recorders listed servants, apprentices, boarders, or relations who may have lived in a household in addition to nuclear family members. Thus the figures presented here on the number of young people per household in the District of Jerusalem can only be taken as a rough index to the number of children born to each household head. 12. Federal Census of 1800, New York, Ontario County, Jerusalem. The exact figure for the average number of people between the ages of one and twenty-six in households affiliated with the Society was 2.2 and for children between the ages of one and sixteen it was 1.2. The exact figure for the average number of children between one and sixteen in nonsectarian households was 2.87. 13. The data I used to reach this figure of four children per married couple (the exact number is 3.9) was drawn from genealogical information scattered throughout Stafford Cleveland’s, History and Directory of Yates County, especially from its chapters on the townships of Jerusalem, Milo, Benton, and Torrey. William J. Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 70. 14. Based on genealogical information contained in Cleveland’s History and Directory of Yates County, first-generation couples in the Society bore an average of 4.9 children and the second generation, 2.8. Quaker women born between 1756 and 1785 bore an average of 5.02 children. See Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America, 70. 15. Hathaway, Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 16; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 2:1167; Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 141–42; Arnold James Potter, “The Life and Times of Jemima Wilkinson” (unpublished manuscript in possession of the Yates County Office of Public History), 604–6. 16. Frances Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project, 2010), 206–7. 17. Of the 133 members of the Friend’s charter generation of converts whose marital status is known, 19 (14 percent) never married. For figures on the proportion of early Americas who never married, see Robert V. Wells, “Quaker Marriage Patterns in a Colonial Perspective,” WMQ 29 ( July 1972): 432.

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18. Stafford Cleveland first coined the title, “the Faithful Sisterhood,” and he provides short biographical sketches of its members. See History and Directory of Yates County, 1:86–96; Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 172. Those among the Sisterhood who never married were Mehitable Smith, Anna Wagener, Lucy Brown, Rachel and Margaret Malin, Lucina Goodspeed, Patience Allen, Hannah Baldwin, Lydia and Phoebe Cogswell, Mary Hunt, Lavina Davis, Mary Holmes, Eunice Beard, and Aphia and Martha Comstock. Those who were widows who never remarried were Sarah Richards, Mercy Aldrich, Susannah Spencer, Mary Gardner, Susannah Hathaway, Elizabeth Carr, Sarah Clark, Lydia Wood, Alice Hazard, and Catherine White. For a work that discusses how celibacy represented a challenge to traditional social arrangements such as marriage and motherhood, see Erik R. Seeman, “Sarah Prentice and the Immortalists: Sexuality, Piety, and the Body in Eighteenth-Century New England,” in Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 125–26. 19. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:664, 85. 20. For insight into women’s work in late-eighteenth-century America, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991); and Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Work and Labor in Early America, ed. Stephen Innes (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the IEAHC, 1988), 70–105. 21. Sarah Richards’s Notebooks, JWP, CU 357. The phrase “Deputy Husband” is coined by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in Goodwives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 36–50. 22. Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 159–73; Lisa Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man: The Domestic Life of Men in Colonial New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 23. Latham Avery to unknown, February 15, 1790, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 24. Ibid. 25. Janet Moore Lindman, “Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary America,” WMQ 57 (April 2000): 393–416; Phyllis Mack, “Gender and Spirituality in Early English Quakerism, 1650–1665,” in Witness for Change: Quaker Women over Three Centuries, ed. Elisabeth Potts Brown and Susan Mosher Stuard (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 31–64. 26. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 69; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 129–30. 27. Death Book of the Society of Universal Friends, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 190–91; Universal Friend to Hannah Wall, August 2, 1803, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 28. Abner Brownell, Enthusiastical Errors Transpired and Detected in a Letter to his Father, Benjamin Brownell (London, CT: Printed for the Author, 1783), 18; “Memoir of Thomas Morris,” in Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase, 477. 29. Hathaway, Narrative of Thomas Hathaway, 29; Potter, “The Life and Times of Jemima Wilkinson,” 604–6. 30. Israel Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America ( Jacksonville, IL: Davis & Penniman, 1869), 423–24.

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31. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States, 1:208. 32. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:67; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 157–58; Wilkinson, Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family, 425–28. For a discussion of how eighteenth-century Americans used architecture to proclaim rank and status, see Kevin Sweeney, “Mansion People: Kinship, Class, and Architecture in Western Massachusetts in the Mid-18th Century,” Winterthur Portfolio 19 (winter 1984): 231–55. 33. “Original Letters from the interior of the State of New York,” in Balance and State Journal, March 1811, printed in David Hudson, Memoir of Jemima Wilkinson (1884; reprint New York: AMS Press, 1972), 276; Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States, 1:206, 208–9. 34. Abner Brownell noted the Friend’s unusual dining practices in Enthusiastical Errors, 19; quote from William Hencher Jr. in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 137. 35. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 135–36; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:49–50; Journal of William Savery, William Savery Papers, 1750–1804, PG 6, Haverford College Special Collections Quaker Collections. 36. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:69, 88 (quotes). 37. Ibid., 1:86–96; Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States, 1:212 38. For the gendered implications of celibacy, see Erik R. Seeman, “‘It Is Better to Marry than to Burn’: Anglo-American Attitudes toward Celibacy, 1600–1800,” Journal of Family History 24 (Oct. 1999): 397–419 (esp. 398); Horowitz, “Women and Universal Salvation,” 172, 183; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:87, 89–90, 93–95 (quote on pg. 93). 39. Deed from Thomas Hathaway to Sarah Richards, June 1, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. For just one of many examples of Sarah Richards’s business transactions on behalf of the Friend, see Receipt from Thomas Hathaway to Sarah Richards, Jan. 12, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 40. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:69, 124–25. 41. Universal Friends Society, Act of Incorporation, Nov. 17, 1791; Meetings of the Society of Friends, 1791–1824, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 42. William N. Fenton, ed., “The Journal of James Emlen Kept on a Trip to Canandaigua, New York,” Ethnohistory 12 (autumn 1965): 289, 293–95. 43. Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636 –1736 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970); E. G. Alderfer, The Ephrata Commune: An Early American Counterculture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). 44. Priscilla J. Brewer, Shaker Communities, Shaker Lives (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986), map facing 1, 13–22; Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 33–34, 40–51, 113–14. 45. Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 25, 234; Lawrence Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 20; Brewer, Shaker Communities, 13, 72–73.

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46. See chapter 5 for a discussion of plans for land distribution in the Universal Friends’ frontier settlement. 47. Stein, The Shaker Experience, 95; Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 17–18, 38, 234; Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia, 18–19; Brewer, Shaker Communities, 20–22. 48. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 38, 40–41; Foster, Women, Family and Utopia, 18–19, 29, 33; Brewer, Shaker Communities, 18. 49. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 32–33, 36–37; Brewer, Shaker Communities, 51, 74. 50. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, 32–33, 36–37; Brewer, Shaker Communities, 51, 74. Women, and especially young women, did gain more spiritual authority among the Shakers when they dominated spirit communication during the “Era of Manifestations” in the 1830s and 1840s (Stein, The Shaker Experience, 165–99), but this was several decades after the Society of Universal Friends had helped to pioneer female religious leadership. 51. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986); Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” WMQ 44 (Oct. 1987): 689–721; Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750 –1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), especially 245, 247–49, 298–99; Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13 (autumn 1987): 37–58. 52. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue”; Ruth H. Bloch, “American Feminine Ideals in Transition: The Rise of the Moral Mother, 1785–1815,” Feminist Studies 4 ( June 1978): 101–26; Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780 –1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 126–59; Barbara E. Lacey, “Women and the Great Awakening in Connecticut” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1984), 68–69, 77–78, 81, 84, 166. 53. Susan E. Klepp, Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760 –1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the OIEAHC, 2009). 54. For works that chart how women used domesticity to enter into the public sphere, see Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review 89 ( June 1984): 620–47; Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, especially 140; and Julie Roy Jeffrey, “Permeable Boundaries: Abolitionist Women and Separate Spheres,” Journal of the Early Republic 21 (spring 2001): 79–93. 55. Wilson, Ye Heart of a Man, 22, 36; Lacey, “Women and the Great Awakening in Connecticut,” 69–77, 80–81. 56. Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700 –1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 164–70; Mary Maples Dunn, “Latest Light on Women of Light,” in Witness for Change, 72–73; Phyllis Mack, “Gender and Spirituality in Early English Quakerism, 1650–1665” in Witness for Change, 56; Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 78–79, 205; Jean R. Soderlund, “Women’s Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings, 1680–1760,” WMQ 44 (Oct. 1987): 722–49. 57. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States, 1:210, 207.

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Chapter 7

1. “Diary of Rev. Thomas Smith in George Peck,” Early Methodism within the Bounds of the Old Genesee Conference (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1860), 250. 2. “A Ride to Niagara,” The Port Folio 4, no. 3 (Sept. 1810): 236; “Jemima Wilkinson,” The Christian Discipline 4 (1817): 277–79. 3. In her dissertation, Leslie Horowitz also makes note of the fact that the rebellion against the Friend was centered on an assault on his property: see “Women and Universal Salvation: Promise, Practice and Everyday Life in the Shakers, Universalists, and Universal Society of Friends, 1770–1820” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2001), 257–58. 4. Journal of William Savery, Oct. 8, 1794, William Savery Papers, 1750– 1804, PG 6, Haverford College Special Collections Quaker Collections; Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, The Country of the Iroquois, and Upper Canada, in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, 2 vols. (London: R. Phillips, 1799), 1:212–13. 5. Herbert A. Wisbey Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 140–41; Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, vol. 1 (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873), 1:57. 6. Journal of William Savery, Nov. 5, 1794, William Savery Papers. There are numerous entries in the records of Ontario County’s Court of Common Pleas that demonstrate an ongoing pattern of litigation between the Potters and Wilkinson: see, for example, entries for the June 1795 and November 1796 sessions, Ontario County Court of Common Pleas, vol. 1, 1794–1803, OCA. 7. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:363–64. 8. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States of North America, 1:213–14. 9. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:69–70 (Cleveland claims that the arrest warrant was issued on the complaint of William Potter, but Chloe Dean is the one actually named, though it is very likely that Potter had his hand in the plot to arrest the Friend); “The Examination of Jemima Wilkinson Universal Friend Taken before James Parker, Esq.,” Sept. 25, 1799, Jemima Wilkinson Testimony, County Court, 1799 (AM21-070), OCA. Frances Dumas asserts that Parker originally issued a warrant for Wilkinson’s arrest on the charge of blasphemy early in 1794 and that the first attempt to apprehend the Friend happened sometime in the same year. She also holds that the warrant was later reissued in 1799. Though this is possible, I have not been able to find any evidence to support this version of events. See Francis Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours Project), 159. 10. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 69. 11. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 159–60 (includes the quote from James Brown Jr.’s notes as abstracted by Arnold James Potter); Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 70, 92. 12. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 70–71; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 160–61.

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13. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels in the United States of North America, 1:216; Agreement between R. Smith, R. Malin, and B. Robinson, Oct. 6, 1796, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Benedict Robison to Universal Friend, July 7, 1805, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Depositions of witnesses, R. Malin v E. Malin et. al., October 20, 1813, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 142. For evidence that Robinson was also involved in litigation with the Universal Friend’s followers, see Benedict Robinson v. Richard Smith and Rachel Malin, June 1794, and Eunice Beard v. Benedict Robinson, June 1806, Ontario County Court of Common Pleas, 1:20, 2:209, OCA. 14. “The Examination of Jemima Wilkinson Called Universal Friend,” Sept. 25, 1799, Jemima Wilkinson Testimony, County Court, 1799 (A M21-070), OCA; Depositions of Jesse Dains, Frances Dains, Thomas Judd, and Eliza Malin, Sept. 26, 1799, Jemima Wilkinson Testimony, County Court, 1799 (A M21-070), OCA. 15. Depositions of Thomas Judd, Jesse Dains, and Eliza Malin, Sept 26, 1799, OCA; Deposition of Chloe Dains, Chloe Dains v Jemima Wilkinson, Court of Oyer and Terminer, 1799 (AM21-674), OCA. 16. Depositions of Thomas Judd and Eliza Malin, Sept. 26, 1799, OCA; Deposition of Chloe Dains, Sept. 26, 1799, OCA. 17. Deposition of Chloe Dains, Sept. 26, 1799, OCA; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1: 71–72. 18. Dumas, The Unquiet World, 161–62; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151–52; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 70–71. Cleveland and Dumas both claim that the charge of blasphemy against the Friend was heard before Ontario County’s Circuit Court, which handled civil cases. However, several records linked to the case are clearly marked as being entered before the county’s Court of Oyer and Terminer, a criminal court. In particular, see “The Information of Chloe Dains wife of Jesse Dains,” Sept. 26, 1799, Chloe Dains v. Jemima Wilkinson, Oyer and Terminer, 1799 (AM21-674), OCA, and “Recognices of Jemima Wilkinson, Richard Smith, Silas Spink, Jesse Dains, Enoch Malin (on behalf of Eliza Malin), Thomas Judd, and Frances Dean,” Sept. 25 and 26, Chloe Dains v. Jemima Wilkinson, Oyer and Terminer, 1799 (AM21-674), OCA. Moreover, the record books of the county’s Circuit Court make no mention of the case and so it seems likely that it came before the court of Oyer and Terminer. 19. Dumas, The Unquiet World, 161–62; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 151–52; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 70–71 (quote on 71). 20. For his part, it appears that the Friend did not rest satisfied with this courtroom victory but went on the legal offensive. In the years following the blasphemy trial, Rachel Malin, acting on behalf of the prophet, initiated four lawsuits. The exact charges are not recorded; however, the defendants—Isaac Kinney, Griffen Hazzard, Daniel Brown Jr., John Townshend, Eliphalet Norris, and Thomas Hathaway Jr.— and several of the witnesses for the defendants—including Benedict Robinson and Dr. Calvin Fargo—were all involved in the attempts to arrest the Universal Friend. Eliphalet Norris and Thomas Hathaway Jr. each ended up having to pay $39.09 in damages, Daniel Brown Jr. and Isaac Kinney each had to pay $103 dollars, and Griffin B. Hazard faced a whopping $551 fine. See Ontario County Circuit Court minute books, June 17, 1802, 180, OCA; Ontario County Court of Common Pleas Vol. 1, 1794–1803, June 3, 1801, OCA; and William Stuart to Rachel Malin, Oct. 2, 1802, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC.

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21. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:72 (quote), 662; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 212. 22. 1818 Tax Assessment for Jerusalem and Milo townships, OCA. While the average value of loyalists’ estates for these two towns was $2,098, the average for apostates stood at $3,564—over 40 percent higher. Counting only those who actively took a hand in attempts to bring down the Universal Friend, the average value of the apostates’ estates drops from $3,564 to $2,916, or 28 percent higher than the loyalists. However, all these figures leave out William Potter and James Parker (their holdings were mostly in the town of Torrey) and, if they were included, would undoubtedly widen the gap between the two groups. 23. Indictment of James Parker, Indictments (1793–1818), Ontario County Court of Oyer and Terminer, 1801, 14, OCA. In addition, a confederate of Parker and Potter, Eliphalet Norris, was charged with “neglect of duty in the office of Justice of the Peace” for refusing to administer an oath of office to an overseer of the poor. Court records do not specify the name of the overseer, but if Parker’s case is any guide, it was probably a man loyal to the Friend. See People v. Eliphalet Norris, Ontario County Court of Oyer and Terminer, June 21, 1798, 12, OCA. 24. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:639–40; Dumas, The Unquiet World, 160. 25. Depositions of Jesse and Francis Dains, Sept. 26, 1799, OCA. 26. People v. Reuben Luther, June 21, 1798, Court of Oyer and Terminer, Docket Book No. 1 (1797–1847), 11, OCA; Jesse Dains assignee v. George Sisson and Ezekiel Sherman, Feb. 21, 1799; Jesse Dains v. Jemima Wilkinson, Feb. 21, 1799; and Jesse Dains v. George Sisson, June 5, 1799, Court of Common Pleas, Vol. 1, 1794–1803, 158, 165–66, OCA; The People v. Jesse Dains, Nov. 6, 1799, Court of the General Sessions Minute Books, Box #5091, OCA. 27. “Abstract of the Case of the Settlers on the Lands Commonly Called the Gore,” JWP, CU 621; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 117–18. 28. William Potter and others v. George Sisson, Ontario County Circuit Court minute books, June 17, 1800, OCA; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:57–58. For Potter’s and Parker’s legal action against other members of the sect also see, James Parker, William Potter, etc. vs. Amos and John Gurnsey, Ontario County Circuit Court minute books, June 15 and June 17, 1802, OCA; and William Potter v. Jonathan Botsford, Nov. 4, 1800 Ontario Court of Common Pleas, Vol. l, 219, OCA. 29. “Agreement for costs of lawsuits,” April, 1799, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; William Stuart to John Briggs, Nov. 3, 1800, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; William Stuart to John Briggs, Aug. 9, 1801, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 30. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:59; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 211. 31. “Agreement for costs of lawsuits,” April 1799, JWP. 32. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels through the United States, 1:207; “Memoir of Thomas Morris,” in Orasmus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1852), 477. 33. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 142–43. 34. Ibid., 143; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:479; Ontario County Court of General Sessions Minute Books, June 6, 1799, Nov. 1800, June 1800, Box #5091, OCA.

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35. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:65; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 122. A letter from Moses Atwater to the Universal Friend makes it clear that the doctor was on very cordial terms with the prophet and members of his Society: see Moses Atwater to the Universal Friend, Feb. 13, 1797, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 36. The Will of Sarah Richards, Nov. 16, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 37. Answer to Bill of Complaint, June 20, 1812, JWP, CU 357; Malin v. Malin, in John L. Wendell, ed., Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature and in the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and Correction of Errors of the State of New York, vol. 1 (New York: Banks, Brothers, Law Publishers, 1874), 1:629–30. 38. William Carter to Richard Smith, May 1, 1798, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Ontario County Circuit Court Minutes, June 1799, OCA. The ejectment case heard in 1799 may not have been the first attempt that Enoch and Eliza Malin made to gain possession of the Friend’s estate. In 1797 and 1798 the Ontario County Court of Common Pleas minute books record suits and countersuits concerning Enoch and Eliza’s efforts to have a John Stiles, who appears to have been a tenant of Rachel Malin, ejected from the disputed tract. See Ontario County Court of Common Pleas minute books, Vol. 1, 64, 71, 92, OCA. 39. The potential prize certainly made Enoch’s actions worth the risk of the legal retaliation he invited. Based on the prices that Enoch charged for the land (which was by all accounts below market value), he could have expected to reap between $13,500 and $18,000 from the sale of the prophet’s 4,500 acre estate. If Enoch bided his time, he could have gained an even greater reward because of rapidly rising land values in central New York: by 1811 the Friend’s lands in Jerusalem were worth at least $50,000. See Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:72–73, 122–23; and Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 143–45, 213. 40. Complaint of Rachel Malin and Jemima Wilkinson v. Enoch Malin et al, May 28, 1823, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC (this was an amended version of the original, 1811 bill of complaint which adds Jemima Wilkinson’s name as a plaintiff ) ; Answer to Bill of Complaint, June 20, 1812, JWP; Wendell, Reports of Cases, 1:629–30; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:122–23. 41. Depositions of witnesses in Rachel Malin v. Enoch Malin et al., Oct. 20, 1813, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 42. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 145–46; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:74. 43. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 143–44, 148; Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 257–58. 44. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:73–74; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 145; R. W. Stoddard to Eliza Malin, Nov. 25, 1816, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; John C. Spencer to Rachel Malin, Dec. 21, 1816, JWP, CU 357 /YCHC. 45. Quote from Thomas Gold found in Arnold James Potter, “The Life and Times of the Public Universal Friend” unpublished manuscript, Yates County Office of Public History (1944), 634; Thomas R. Gold to Rachel Malin, Nov. 19, 1816, JWP, CU 621. 46. Ontario County Circuit Court minute books, June 24, 1817, OCA; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 146; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:73–74; Thomas R. Gold to Rachel Malin, May 25, 1818, JWP, CU 621.

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47. Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 14–15, 40, 141–47, 183; Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 81–84, 208–11; Carole Shammas et al., Inheritance in America from Colonial Times to the Present (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 30–36, 42–47, 51–55. 48. Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” in Ruth H. Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650 –1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 139–42. 49. Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 6–10, 30–39, 164–73, 185–86; Judith Apter Klinghoffer and Lois Elkis, “ ‘The Petticoat Electors’: Women’s Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776–1807,” JER 12 (summer 1992): 159–93. 50. Gregory T. Knouff, The Soldiers’ Revolution: Pennsylvanians in Arms and the Forging of Early American Identity (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), xiv–xv, 271, 273, 280–82; Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash, 149–55. 51. Paul Moyer, Wild Yankees: The Struggle for Independence along Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Reeve Huston, Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest and Party Politics in Antebellum New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement of the Maine Frontier, 1760 –1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for IEAHC, 1990). 52. Thomas R. Gold to the Universal Friend and Rachel Malin, Dec. 14, 1818, JWP, CU 621; Rachel Malin to Thomas Gold, Jan. 12, 1819, JWP, CU 357 /YCHC. 53. Adding to the pressure of the legal fight against Williams was the fact that the Society had to fend off other legal challenges to the prophet’s estate. The most serious one involved the Albany lawyer and long-time adherent of the Universal Friend, William Carter. In the 1790s Carter had joined Benedict Robinson and James Hathaway as a proprietor of Jerusalem and later bought out his two partners’ interest in the town. All seemed well until the early nineteenth century when Carter jumped on the bandwagon with other well-heeled members of the Society and began to dispute the legitimacy of the Friend’s land claims. In 1808 Carter wrote a letter to Rachel Malin in which he challenged the prophet’s right to several hundred acres in Jerusalem and advised that he give them up in order to “prevent any further troubles & disputes which if wer tried in law I think must end greatly to thy disadvantage.” The matter was not resolved and by the end of 1820 Carter had run out of patience. In another letter to Rachel, he declared, “I beg leave to inform thee that I have been preparing a bill in chancery against thee, in order to procure a settlement of the business between us.” Moreover, Carter had expanded his complaint and now claimed over half of the Friend’s estate in Jerusalem and vowed that, unless he received money for the land, he would take the Universal Friend to court. In the end, Carter never followed through on his threats, but his claim loomed over the Society as they battled it out with Elisha Williams. See Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:63; William Carter to Rachel Malin, October, 1808, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; William Carter to Rachel Malin, December 1, 1820, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. William Carter’s son, Samuel, continued threats of litigation against Rachel Malin into the early 1820s and even threatened he would employ her arch enemy,

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Elisha Williams, to manage the case: see Samuel W. Carter to R. Malin, May 23, 1823, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. For evidence of additional litigation over the prophet’s lands faced by the Society of Universal Friends, see Thomas W. Sill to Rachel Malin, Sept. 20, 1822, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 54. Rachel Malin to Thomas R. Gold, Sept. 29, 1817, JWP, CU 357 /YCHC; Thomas R. Gold to Rachel Malin, Oct. 6, 1817, JWP, CU 621. Two examples of the evidence that the Friend’s followers brought forward to support his case are Exhibit “S”: Sarah Richards to Ruth Pritchard, June 6, 1793, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; and Exhibit “B”: Sarah Richards to Ruth Pritchard, March 10, 1793, JWP, CU 621 / YCHC. 55. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 147; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:74; Wendell, Reports of Cases, 1:633. 56. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 147; Answer to Bill of Complaint by Malin heirs, Sept. 30, 1818, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Wendell, Reports of Cases, 1:635–36. 57. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 147, 149–50, 213; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:75–76; Wendell, Reports of Cases, 1:694–95. The Court of Errors did, however, confirm the claims of Benajah and Elnathan Botsford Jr. to their heirs, finding that the brothers had made the purchases in good faith, unaware of Sarah Richards’s position as trustee to the Friend. 58. Legal Fees due to Thomas R. Gold and Thomas W. Sill, Sept. 31, 1823, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 59. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 159; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:76–77. 60. Death Book of the Society of Universal Friends, in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 194; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:85. 61. Depositions of witnesses R. Malin v E. Malin et al., October 20, 1813, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 212; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:1167. Epilogue

1. Society of Universal Friend’s Death Book, in Herbert A. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 195. The Society’s Death Book does not list the date of the prophet’s death, but Stafford Cleveland establishes the date as July 1, 1819. See Stafford C. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, vol. 1 (Penn Yan, NY: S. C. Cleveland, 1873), 1:78. The Friend’s alleged final words are quoted in Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 163. 2. E. H. Walker to Rachel Malin, July 17, 1816, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 3. Rachel Malin’s Dream and Date Book, JWP, CU 357; Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., “J. L. D. Mathies, Western New York State Artist,” New York History 39 (1958): 133– 50; Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 84–85. It is not clear why John Mathies changed his last name. It was not to escape association with his fanatical brother, Robert, because the artist appears to have changed the spelling of his last name long before the prophet Matthias became infamous. It is likely that John simply changed his name for professional reasons.

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4. Ruth Spencer to the Universal Friend, Feb. 27, 1819, JWP, CU 357 / YCHS; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 163. 5. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 163–64; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:78. 6. Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:78; Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 142; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 171–72. 7. Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 32–37, 41–57; Claudia Lauper Bushman and Richard Lyman Bushman, Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 34–35, 47–57. 8. Herbert Wisbey also identifies these factors as crucial in the Universal Friends’ decline in Pioneer Prophetess, 152–53; Rachel Malin’s Dream and Date Book, JWP. 9. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 150. 10. “The Love of Money,” (author unknown) JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; William Turpin to Benedict Robinson, April 3, 1822, JWP, CU 357. 11. The Universal Friend’s Will, February 25, 1818, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC; Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 166. 12. Spencer Hall to Rachel and Margaret Malin, June 18, 1820 and Feb. 6, 1827, JWP, CU 357 / YCHC. 13. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 169–71. 14. Ibid., 171. 15. Ibid., 168–69; Cleveland, History and Directory of Yates County, 1:109–10; Item written in the margins of a newspaper signed “Michael,” October 11, 1849, JWP, CU 357. 16. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 169. 17. Ibid., 168, 170–71; Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950), 35. For examples of Universal Friends’ involvement in the abolitionist and anti-mason crusades, see Marlilla Marks to Margaret Malin, Dec. 5, 1843, JWP, YCHC; Rowland Mosley to James Brown, April 2, 1829, JWP, YCHC. 18. Catherine A Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 –1845 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 19. Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meanings of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” in Ruth H. Bloch, Gender and Morality in Anglo-American Culture, 1650–1800 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 143–44; Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 5, 7, 10, 164–73, 185–86. 20. Anne M. Boylan, “Women and Politics in the Era before Seneca Falls,” JER 10 (autumn, 1990): 363–82; Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash, 5–6, 46–81; Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).

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A Note on Sources

1. Susan Juster, “Demagogues or Mystagogues? Gender and the Language of Prophecy in the Age of Democratic Revolutions,” AHR 104 (1999): 1560–81; Juster, “To Slay the Beast: Visionary Women in the Early Republic,” in A Mighty Baptism: Race, Gender, and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa MacFarlane (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 19–37; and Juster, “’Neither male nor female’: Jemima Wilkinson and the Politics of Gender in Post-Revolutionary America,” in Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 357–79. 2. Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., Pioneer Prophetess: Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), 218; Frances Dumas, The Unquiet World: The Public Universal Friend and America’s First Frontier (Dundee, NY: Yates Heritage Tours, 2010), 268–69. 3. Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 174–75. 4. Orasmus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham’s Purchase and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester, NY: William Alling, 1852), 477–78. Herbert Wisbey does attach a name to this story and claims that the Friend banished Benajah Botsford to Nova Scotia for three years because of his wish to marry the prophet’s sister, Debora. See Wisbey, Pioneer Prophetess, 69. 5. Mrs. William Hathaway, Jr. A Narrative of Thomas Hathaway and His Family (New Bedford, MA: E. Anthony & Sons, 1869), 6.

Bibliography

Abbreviations AAS CSL CU HSP JAH JER JWP LDS MBP OCA OIEAHC PAST RIHS SAP WMQ YCHC

American Antiquarian Society Connecticut State Library Cornell University, Carl A. Kroch Library, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Historical Society of Pennsylvania Journal of American History Journal of the Early Republic Jemima Wilkinson Papers Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Center Moses Brown Papers Ontario County Archives Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Papers of the American Slave Trade Rhode Island Historical Society Sidney Ayers Papers William and Mary Quarterly Yates County History Center

Primary Sources Manuscript American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA Journal of Abner Brownell, 1779–87, 2 vols. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Family History Center Smithfield Quaker Men’s Monthly Meeting Minutes Smithfield Quaker Women’s Monthly Meeting Minutes Connecticut State Library, Hartford, CT Groton Rate Bills, Box #1, RG62 Record Book of Groton’s First Baptist Church, Vol. 1 Cornell University Regional History Collection, Ithaca, NY Jemima Wilkinson Papers, Mss #357 & #621 Sidney Ayers Papers, Mss #1605 Haverford College Quaker Collections, Haverford, PA William Savery Papers, 1750–1804, PG 6

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Newspapers and Periodicals The American Museum Balance and State Journal The Christian Disciple The Freeman’s Journal Philadelphia Gazette Pittsburgh Mercury The Port Folio Potter’s American Monthly

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Index

Aldrich, William, 26 Allen, Patience, 38, 235n18 American Revolution. See revolutionary era Apocalypse, 61–63 Armageddon, 76–77 Attleboro Gore, 13 Atwater, Moses, 181 Austin, David, 55 Avery, Jerusha, 149–50 Avery, Latham, 38, 40, 149–50 Avery, Susanna, 150 Baldwin, Hannah, 156, 233n47, 235n18 Baptists, 6, 17 Barns, Henry, 197 Barton, Michael, 196–97 Bean, Mary, 114–15, 137, 156 Beard, Eunice, 156, 233n47, 235n18 Beyerley, Elizabeth, 87, 107, 109 biblical prophecy, 72–73 Botsford, Able, 34, 128, 157 Botsford, Benajah, 52, 114–15, 178, 182, 243n57 Botsford, Elnathan, Jr., 182, 243n57 Botsford, Elnathan, Sr., 39 Botsford, Jonathan, Jr., 34 Botsford, Jonathan, Sr., 43, 123, 178 Botsford, Lucy (Mrs. Stephen Wilkinson), 52, 156 Botsford, Mary (Mrs. Thomas Hathaway, Jr.), 52, 67–68, 147 Bramall, Mary, 38, 87, 105, 109–10 Brewster, Margaret, 19 Briggs, John, 128, 129, 157, 177–78, 186 Briggs, Peleg, 28, 30, 34 Briggs, Sarah, 145 Brown, Abigail, 128 Brown, Anna, 138 Brown, Barnabas, 114–15, 130, 131 Brown, Benjamin, Jr. 29, 35, 38, 52, 146 Brown, Benjamin, Sr. 29, 35, 36–37, 38, 128

Brown, Daniel, Jr., 138, 171, 239n20 Brown, Daniel, Sr., 29, 38, 138, 169 Brown, Elijah, 19 Brown, Elijah (son of Benjamin Brown, Sr.), 29, 38 Brown, George, 138 Brown, James, Jr., 192, 195–97 Brown, James, Sr., 29, 38 Brown, Lucy, 157, 235n18 Brown, Micajah, 29, 38 Brown, Moses, 14 Brown, Russell, 138 Brown, Sarah (Mrs. Benedict Arnold Potter) 43, 52, 174 death of, 193 in Pennsylvania, 81, 85 travels to New York, 114–15, 128 Brown, Susannah (Mrs. Benedict Robinson), 143, 147 Brownell, Abner, 29, 34, 40, 43, 50 and Enthusiastical Errors, 21–22, 32 joins the Friend, 31–32, 39, 52 leaves the Friend, 32, 50–51 as spiritual seeker, 32, 44–45, 50 Burrows, Roswell, 149–50 Burrows, Silas, 51, 149–50 Card, Stephen, 34, 52, 129 Carr, Elizabeth, 235n18 Carter, William, 34, 36, 46, 127, 135, 242n53 Charlotte Temple (Rowson), 112 City Hill, 128 Clamford, Susannah, 145 Clarissa (Richardson), 112 Clark, Anna Marie, 196 Clark, George, 196–97 Clark, Sarah, 144, 156, 235n18 Clinton, George, 123–25 clothing as indicator of status, 91–92 Cogswell, Lydia, 235n18 Cogswell, Phebe, 233n47, 235n18 Columbus fever, 11

259

260

INDEX

Come-Outers, 63 Comforter. See Public Universal Friend Comstock, Aphia, 235n18 Comstock, Martha, 235n18 Coquette, The (Foster), 112 Court of Errors, 187 Cuff, 35 Cumberland, RI, 13, 36, 60 Dains, Castle, 34, 129–30 Dains, Chloe, 172–73, 174 Dains, Francis, 172, 177 Dains, Jesse, 169, 176–77 Dains, Johnathan, 130, 157 Dark Day, 1–2, 64 Davis, Lavina, 170, 235n18 Dayton, Abigail, 104–7, 108, 110–11, 127 Dayton, Abraham, 85, 117, 127, 130, 232n35 disciples. See Universal Friends Drinker, Elizabeth, 79 East Greenwich, RI, 28, 29–30, 36 Elridge, Jehu, 43, 83 Enthusiastical Errors (Brownell), 21–22, 32 Ephrata Commune, 117–18, 158 evangelical Christianity, 6–7, 20, 96, 150–51, 162. See also New Lights Faithful Sisterhood, 148, 156, 161 Fargo, Calvin, 171, 239n20 Fell, Margaret, 63–64, 164 feminization of Christianity, 70 First Great Awakening, 6–7, 16–17, 162, 198–99 Fox, George, 73 Free Quakers, 85–86, 87 Free Will Baptists, 6 Friend’s Settlement, 128–33 frontier settlement, 119, 128, 129–30, 133, 142–43 Gardener, Mary, 53, 129, 144, 235n18 “Garter, The,” 123 Gates, Perley, 147 gender and evangelical Christianity, 6–7, 150–51 and property, 184–85 and religion, 6–7 and revolutionary era, 6–7, 81, 199

See also New Lights: and gender norms, Public Universal Friend: and gender norms, Quakers: and gender roles, Universal Friends: and gender norms “Genesee Fever,” 128 Geneva (Kanadesaga), NY, 117, 125 Gold, Thomas, 183, 186 Goodspeed, Lucina, 138, 156, 235n18 Gorham, Nathaniel, 121, 125–26 Groton, CT, 28, 36 Guernsey, Amos, 153 Guernsey, Daniel, 135 Hall, Robert, 28, 30 Hall, Spencer, 194–95 Hartford agreement, 119 Hartwell, Samuel, 52 Hathaway, James, 28, 34, 35–37, 38, 41–42, 48, 77 Hathaway, Susannah, 235n18 Hathaway, Thomas, Jr., 59, 239n20 excommunicated by the Friend, 68 and land in New York, 127, 178 marriage of, 52, 67–68, 143, 147 and rebellion against the Friend, 169–70 Hathaway, Thomas, Sr., 28, 38, 41, 117, 158 economic status of, 36–37 and Jerusalem, 134–35 and land in New York, 125, 127, 157, 230n16 in Pennsylvania, 81, 87 as Tory, 40, 203 Haudenosaunee, 117, 118–19, 155 Hazard, Alice (née Potter), 23, 38, 72, 81, 83, 235n18 Hazard, Griffin, 171, 239n20 Heaton, Hannah, 20 Hessian fly, 130 History of Jemima Wilkinson, The (Hudson). See Hudson, David Holmes, Elizabeth, 85, 127, 128 Holmes, Jedidiah, 29, 127, 128 Holmes, Mary, 156, 235n18 Hudson, David, 183, 193, 202 Hunt, Mary, 193, 235n18 Hyde, Patience, 14 Hymes, Osa, 196–97 Ingraham, Asa, 182 Ingraham, Experience, 156 Ingraham, Solomon, 188 inheritance procedures, 184

INDEX

261

Ireland, Shadrack, 55, 158–59, 192 Iroquois. See Haudenosaunee

Morris, Thomas, 155 “Mother of Israel,” 164

Jerusalem, NY, 116, 133–38 Judd, Thomas, 172–73

Negus, Sarah, 35 New Bedford, MA, 28, 36 New Israelites, 55, 63 New Lights, 16, 61 and domesticity, 163 and dreams, 73 and the Friend’s birth, 19–20 and the Friend’s doctrine, 55, 57, 60–61, 71 and gender norms, 70 and perfectionism, 71 and preaching, 71 and slavery, 214n13 and Universal Friends, 43 and women, 70–71, 163 See also evangelical Christianity New Light Stir, 18, 43, 47, 57, 198 New London, CT, 36 New Milford, CT, 29, 30, 36, 43 New York Lessees, 121–23, 125 Nichols, Isaac, 157 Nichols, John, 28, 30 Niles, Sarah, 43 Norris, Eliphalet, 170, 175–76, 178, 239n20, 240n23

Kent, James, 183–84, 186–87 Kenyon, Elizabeth, 33, 148, 156 Kinney, Elizabeth, 144 Kinney, Ephraim, 171 Kinney, Isaac, 171, 239n20 Kinney, Mary, 180 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Duc de, 140–42, 164 Lee, Ann, 14–15, 17, 55, 118, 159 Lewis, Morgan, 174 Little Rest (Kingston), RI, 13 Livingston, John, 121, 123 Luther, Bethany, 34 Luther, Reuben, 176 Malin, Elijah, 131, 133, 137 Malin, Eliza (née Richards), 137, 172–73, 180–83 Malin, Enoch, 137, 155, 170–71, 180–83 Malin, Margaret, 137, 186, 197, 235n18 death of, 195 and the Friend’s estate, 194 as trustee of the Friend, 136, 149 Malin, Rachel, 105, 137, 155, 235n18 as biblical prophet, 73, 100 death of, 195 dress of, 143 and the Friend’s estate, 194–95 and litigation, 182–83, 186–87, 239n20 and travels to New York, 131 as trustee of the Friend, 136, 149, 157 Man, Doctor, 11, 18 Marshall, Christopher, Sr., 23, 40, 41, 83, 109 and the Ephrata Commune, 117 and the Free Quakers, 85–86 and Universal Friend’s Advice, The, 86 Massachusetts’s Preemption, 119–23, 125–26 Maxwell, Hugh, 124–25 Meacham, Joseph, 159, 160–61, 192 Methodists, 6 millennialism, 61–63 “Millennial Laws, The,” 160 Miller, Desire, 48, 74 Morris, Robert, 126

Old Lights, 16 Outlet Creek, 132 Ovett, Elizabeth, 144 Parker, Alice, 147 Parker, James, 35, 103–4, 130, 147, 157, 232n35 and Abner Brownell, 50–51 as biblical prophet, 73, 100 as biblical witness, 64–65 joins the Friend, 28 as justice of the peace, 37, 168, 175, 180 and land in New York, 120–27, 157, 177–78, 230n16 military experience of, 39 in Pennsylvania, 87 pioneers Friend’s Settlement, 127–29 and rebellion against the Friend, 168–70, 172–74, 178–79, 181, 188 and religious affiliation, 43, 44 social status of, 37, 176 Phelps, Oliver, 121, 125–26, 135 Pickering, Timothy, 155 postmillennialists, 63

262

INDEX

Potter, Armenia, 114 Potter, Arnold James, 202 Potter, Benedict Arnold, 52, 81, 85, 98, 169, 230n16 Potter, Mary Leah, 202 Potter, Penelope, 28, 38, 146, 174 Potter, Penelope (Mrs. Benjamin Brown, Jr.), 52, 146 Potter, Susannah, 2, 74–75 Potter, Thomas, 168 Potter, William, Jr., 71–72 Potter, William, Sr., 28, 34, 35, 188 estate of, 37, 126–27 and land in New York, 125–27, 157, 177–78 in Pennsylvania, 81 and political office, 37, 175 and Quakers, 43 and rebellion against the Friend, 168, 173, 176–79, 181 Potter Location, 177 Preemption Line, 123–26 premillennialists, 63 Prentice, Sarah, 19–20, 61 Prentice, Solomon, 19, 61 Prentice, Thomas, 147 Pritchard, Ruth (Mrs. Justus P. Spencer), 25, 33–34, 47, 186 death of, 190 as the Friend’s secretary, 136 joins the Friend, 38, 44 and move to New York, 114–15 preaching of, 49 as schoolteacher, 132 “Public Friend,” 19 public sphere, 80 Public Universal Friend, 2–3, 5, 52–53, 108, 155 and the Apocalypse, 63–64 authority of, 152–53 birth of, 13–20 and celibacy, 15, 35, 67–68, 100–101, 144 carriage of, 115, 153 as the Comforter, 22–24, 30 commentary on, 80, 98–104, 111–13, 166–67 death of, 3, 189, 191–92 doctrine of, 5, 7, 55–65 dreams of, 73–75, 190 dress of, 90–93 estate of, 135 final years of, 189–91 gender identity of, 8–9, 92–93, 94–95, 100

and gender norms, 7–8, 81, 97–99, 142–43, 167, 179, 199–200 homes of, 132– 33, 136–37, 153 as Jesus Christ, 13, 20–23, 172 on marriage, 147–48 and millennialism, 57, 61–65 moves to Jerusalem, 133–34, 136 and move to New York, 115, 130, 116–18 mystical powers of, 48, 71–72 myths surrounding, 203 New England ministry of, 12–13, 24–30 in New Jersey, 87–89 and New Lights, 19–20, 55, 57, 71 opposition to, 24, 44, 88–89, 185, 169–70 Pennsylvania Ministry of, 3, 81–89 personal habits of, 67, 140 physical appearance of, 93–95 preaching style of, 95–97 and property disputes, 167, 176–77, 179–87, 180–87 prosecuted for blasphemy, 167, 170–74 and Quakers, 19, 55–56, 93, 98 rebellion against, 167–73 seeks passage to Britain, 26 voice of, 95, 97 will of, 193–94 See also Jemima Wilkinson Pulteney Associates, 126 Quaker Reformation, 44, 70 Quakers, 35, 60, 97, 192 and celibacy, 69 and childbearing, 146, 163–64 and discipline, 60, 67 and domesticity, 163–64 and dreams, 41, 73 and female preachers, 18–19, 69 and the First Great Awakening, 17 and the Friend’s doctrine, 55–57, 60–61 and gender roles, 70, 151 and marriage, 16, 68–69 and millennialism, 63–64 and New Light Stir, 43 and response to the Friend, 24, 28, 44 and the Revolutionary War, 15, 40 and the Universal Friends, 43 and women, 69–70, 163–64, 199 See also Free Quakers Randall, Benjamin, 17, 55 Rathbun, Valentine, 32, 42 Republican Mother, 6, 162, 199–200 Revelation, book of, 63

INDEX revolutionary era, 4, 197 and childbearing, 163 and the frontier, 115–16 and gender, 4, 6–7, 81, 199 and millennialism, 62–63 and print media, 80 and property, 184–85 and prophets, 4, 55 and public sphere, 80 and religion, 4–6, 47, 55, 63, 77–78, 198–99 and social anxiety during, 81, 110–12 and symbolic meaning of dress, 92 and women, 6, 161–62, 185, 199–200 Reynolds, Hannah (Mrs. Stephen Card), 52, 175 Reynolds, John, 28, 129 Reynolds, Martha, 138, 156 Rich, Caleb, 55 Richards, Abraham, 43 Richards, Asa, 135, 152 Richards, Sarah, 33–34, 52, 129, 152–53, 235n18 and allegations of attempted murder, 105–7 as biblical prophet, 73, 100 as biblical witness, 64 controversy over will of, 181–87 death of, 136 dreams of, 42–43, 46–47, 75–76 dress of, 93 marriage of, 41, 42–43 in Pennsylvania, 87–88, 130–31 as schoolteacher, 132 and smallpox, 88 spiritual gifts of, 49, 72–73 travels to New York, 115, 130–31 as trustee of the Friend, 135, 149, 157, 180–81 Robinson, Benedict, 34, 188, 239n20 economic status of, 37 and land in New York, 127, 134–35, 157, 178, 230n16 marriage of, 143, 147 punished by Friend, 152 and rebellion against the Friend, 171–72 and travels with the Friend, 88–89 Rose, John, 28, 39 Rose, Orpha, 28 Sanford, Nathan, 187 Scott, Margaret (Mrs. Elija Botsford), 143 Scott, Orpha, 143, 147 Scott, Rebecca, 143, 144

263

Scott, Rhoda, 26 Second Great Awakening, 198 sectarian communities, 158–59 Separates, 16–17 Shakers, 6, 49, 55 and celibacy, 159 and communal life, 159 discipline of, 160 and gender, 159–61 and millennialism, 63 organization of, 160–61 and property, 159 and women, 160–61 Shearman, Ezekiel, 117, 138, 177 Shearman, Mary (née Supple), 138 Shearman, Thomas, 129 Sisson, George, 34, 176–78, Six Nations. See Haudenosaunee. Smith, Elizabeth, 38 Smith, Mehitable, 28, 34, 43, 50–51, 130–31, 136, 235n18 Smith, Richard, Jr., 28, 38, 43, 51 Smith, Richard, Sr., 28, 37–38, 43, 117, 127, 130, 157 Smithfield monthly meeting, 15, 17, 25–26, 61 Society of Universal Friends, 8, 157 and apostates, 116, 167, 174–79, 188 and celibacy, 148, 156, 159 commentary on, 80, 98–104, 110–12 compared to Shakers, 159–61 consequences of joining, 46–47 Death Book of, 35 decline of, 3, 167, 187–88, 192–97 and deference toward the Friend, 101–2 and dreams, 49, 73 factionalism in, 127, 165, 174–79, 188, 197 formation of, 13, 29–30 and frontier settlement, 3, 113–19, 127–33, 128–30, 131–33, 138–39 and lands disputes, 120–27, 177–78 meetinghouses of, 30, 118, 132 and men, 157–58, 174–75 and New Lights, 43, 71, 163 opposition to, 88–89, 106–7, 193 in Pennsylvania, 87–88 practices of, 54–55, 65–71, 151 and premillennialism, 63 and Quakers, 43, 67, 163–64 rebellion within, 8, 167–73, 179–83, 188 and restrictions on behavior, 66–67 and women, 144, 151–57, 160–63, 188, 200 See also Universal Friends.

264

INDEX

Some Considerations (Wilkinson), 29 South Kingston, RI, 28, 30, 36 Spencer, George, 28, 30, 46 Spencer, Susannah, 34, 193, 235n18 Spink, Silas, 148 Stiles, John, 241n38 Stoddard, Robert W., 183 Stone, Anna, 129 Stone, Asahel, Jr., 182 Stone, Asahel, Sr., 127, 129, 175, 178 Stone, Truman, 182 Stonington, CT, 29, 30, 36 Strict Congregationalists. See Separates. Stuart, William, 178 Styer, Anna, 105–6, 108–9, 114–15 Sullivan’s expedition, 117 Supple, Abraham, 85 Supple, John, 143

Universal Friends and childbearing, 146 and domestic life, 142–49, 163–64 dreams of, 41–43, 74–77 and gender norms, 81, 97–99, 101–2, 142–45, 147–51, 155–57 kinship ties among, 38–39, 52, 143 and marriage, 35, 147–48 and motives for joining the Friend, 36, 47–49, 51–52, 102–3 and personal anxieties, 40–43 previous religious affiliation of, 43–44, 53 and Revolutionary War, 39–44 social profile of, 33–39, 53 socioeconomic status of, 36–38, 175–76 spiritual gifts of, 48–49, 72–73 and spiritual seeking, 44–45 See also Society of Universal Friends Universal Friend’s Advice, The (Wilkinson), 54, 58, 60, 65, 86 Universalists, 6

Wagener, David, 105–7, 138, 155, 188 as biblical prophet, 100 economic status of, 37, and the Friend, 85, 87, 101 Walker, Elizabeth, 189–90 Wall, Hannah, 152 Warwick, RI, 30 Western New York, 120–21, 126, 129–30 White, Catherine, 235n18 White, Noah, 55 Whitefield, George, 17 Whittaker, James, 159, 192 Wilkinson, Amey (née Whipple), 13 Wilkinson, Benjamin, 15, 209n13 Wilkinson, Deborah (Mrs. Benajah Botsford), 26, 52 Wilkinson, Elizabeth (Mrs. Samuel Hartwell), 26, 52 Wilkinson, Jemima, 8 birth, 13 disowned by Quakers, 17, 61 early life, 13–14 experiences anxiety, 14–18 family of, 13, 25–26, 208n5 and First Great Awakening, 16–17 illness of, 11–12 and New Lights, 17, 60–61 and Quakers, 18–19 transformation into the Friend, 3, 30, 11–12, 9–10 See also Public Universal Friend Wilkinson, Jeptha, 15, 40, 117 Wilkinson, Jeremiah, 13–14, 25, 34 Wilkinson, Marcy (Mrs. William Aldrich), 26, 127, 138, 156, 191, 235n18 Wilkinson, Patience (Mrs. Thomas Potter), 15, 26, 168–69, 190 Wilkinson, Stephen, 15, 26, 40, 52 Williams, Elisha, 183–84, 186–87 Williamson, Charles, 126, 133, 147 Wilson, George, 110 Wilson, Sarah, 38, 104–12 Wood, Lydia, 235n18 Wood, Nathaniel, 55 Worcester, PA, 79, 86–87 Wright, Lucy, 159, 161, 192

Wagener, Anna, 137, 156, 235n18

Young, Brigham, 193

Tioga Point, 130 Towerhill, Chloe, 35, 137, 156, 169 Treaty of Paris, 118 Turpin, William, 81, 97–98, 148, 193, 195