Professor intrigued by Jemima Wilkinson

YATES COUNTY--One of the most fascinating--or odd--foremothers of the area has been given new life in a recent book by Professor Paul Moyers, Professor of Early American History & Associate Chair at SUNY Brockport. In "The Public Universal Friend," (Cornell University Press, 2015) he takes a fresh look at Jemima Wilkinson, a self-proclaimed prophet who settled with a band of her followers in the Penn Yan.
Moyers says he became intrigued by Wilkinson while researching his first book, "Wild Yankees," and read accounts of travelers who explored the Susquehanna Valley and took a little extra time to visit Wilkinson. In fact, there has long been a connection between our area of upstate New York and Pennsylvania--one that continues to current times. "I always had her in the back of my mind, and when I got my position at SUNY Brockport in 2001, I decided to follow through," he said.
Meticulous research carefully separates folklore about Wilkinson from documented fact. Much of this was done at the Yates County History Center which offered, he says, a wonderful opportunity to see more of the Finger Lakes.
"Whatever we know about her early life was written after the fact," he says. "She's a very elusive figure. She didn't write down much about herself, even her followers didn't focus on her, they focused on the Public Universal Friend."
Born and raised a Quaker, Wilkinson is known to have fallen so gravely ill in 1776, her death was imminently expected. At a moment when watchers at her bedside expected life to have left the young woman, she opened her eyes and declared she had died and been returned to earth as "a holy vessel of Jesus Christ and God and the Holy Spirit," no longer Jemima Wilkinson but a prophet, neither male nor female, to be henceforth known as the "Publick Universal Friend."
"Public Friends" at the time, were Quakers who went from meeting to meeting, to testify and preach. The newly minted Public Universal Friend did the same, traveling from her native Rhode Island through Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Her travels were widely reported, but those attending the meetings she visited were, for the most part, less than impressed.
"She had an incredible knowledge of the Bible, she could quote entire passages," Moyer says. "But there was nothing very innovative about her message. It was more a random collection of beliefs, nothing unorthodox. Read the Bible, obey God and repent of sins. What fascinated people was not the message but the messenger."
Despite her often disjointed and unoriginal preaching, some of her listeners were drawn by her sincerity and charisma. Wilkinson chose to dress and wear her hair in a way that gave many who saw her pause--was she male or female? Neither, said the Friend, and at another time, "I am what I am." It was inspiring to some, but others who saw and listened to her became profoundly uneasy. Wilkinson and her followers, as many not of her group, traveled north following the Susquehanna River, eventually finding a home at the northeast end of Keuka Lake in the spring of 1790. The town they named Jerusalem was later named Penn Yan and became the county seat for Yates County.
Unlike other communities founded for religious reasons, the followers of the Friend did not live communally but for the most part maintained individual households. "They pursued a way of life nearly indistinguishable from anyone around them," Moyer says. "Members of the group set up some of the first saw mills and grist mills in the area and developed some of the earliest industries." The Friend encouraged celibacy among her followers but her group included some who recognized that practice was not for them.
Controversy followed her, with those affected divided between those trying to discredit the Friend and those protecting and assisting Wilkinson.
Moyer's experience of researching Wilkinson was at some points frustrated by the dearth of first-hand information about her. "People spilled an abundance of ink describing the Friend, but much of this commentary is built on secondhand information or is highly partisan," he writes. For instance, one widely-quoted account published two years after Wilkinson's death was written by David Hudson, a lawyer with an agenda--he represented former followers hoping to benefit from the Friend's estate.
"One conclusion I did reach, no matter what was going on with her, she was being honest about it, she truly believed she was what she said she was," Moyer says. "She wasn't a fraud or faker."
Find out more about America's first native born woman who founded a religious movement at the Yates County History Center in Penn Yan, which is also one of the places where Moyer's book is available.