Public Universal Friend
Jemima Wilkinson (29th November 1759 - July 1, 1819)[1] was a charismatic American evangelist who preached total sexual abstinence and the Ten Commandments to her Quaker "Society of Universal Friends." Her family were strict Quakers, most of her views were from her upbringing in the Quaker religion.
As a young woman, she was plagued by a debilitating illness which culminated in a fevered state, subsequent to which she was bedridden and near death. When she awoke she claimed that she was sent by God to preach his message. This propelled her to claim that she was a holy vessel of Jesus Christ and God and the Holy Spirit. She became the "Publick Universal Friend", reborn at her eulogy, and never again responded to her original birth name.
Wilkinson was one of the first female visionaries of religion and Women's rights in the United States. She pioneered the settlement of Watkins Glen, NY, erecting the Mill at the South End of Seneca Lake. She also established Jerusalem, NY, which became renamed as Penn Yan, NY. Her Legacy predates Joseph Smith, the Seneca Falls Convention, and Robert G. Ingersoll, all of whom stem from Her Presence within the History of the Finger Lakes.
Wilkinson preached a regimen of strict abstinence, and to be friends with everyone. Many people came to visit her and her followers and were taken in with open arms. Many who came to visit were given all the comforts of home and were only asked to leave if they had done something against the Friends.
Wilkinson preached to residents of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Finally she settled with her congregation in the state of New York in the Finger Lakes area near Penn Yan. She and her followers were the first white people that the Native Americans in this region ever saw and traded with.
The Jemima Wilkinson House is still standing in Jerusalem, New York, on a List of Registered Historic Places in Yates County, New York.
The Universal Society of Friends that Jemima Wilkinson led to upstate New York believe that the soul of a human personality finds an eternal continuance. Thus, when the person is departed, the Society used the term, "to leave time" instead of "to die". Jemima Wilkinson left time on the first of July, 1819, exactly ten years before Local Man Joseph Smith completed his translation of the Book of Mormon.
References
- ^ History of Jemima Wilkinson: a preacheress of the eighteenth century, p. ii APPENDIX, NO II By David Hudson
External links
- The Friend's Society Index
- Jemima Wilkinson: Celibacy and the Communal Life, The Re-Incarnation of the Divine in Female Form, 1758-1819
- Matriarchies Amid the Finger Lakes
- The Beddoe Tract Jemima Wilkinson purchased a section of this tract for her community. Contains photo of Jemima Wilkinson's house.
- Social roots of the Mormon United Order
- PBS History Detectives episode looks at Incorporation papers for Universal Friends
- Claus Bernet (2002). "Public Universal Friend". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 20. Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 1545–1553. ISBN 3-88309-091-3.
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