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.
UPDATE: In the process of creating The Alley Cast, our team has learned a lot and sometimes recognized mistakes we made earlier in the process. Isabel Steven has written a companion piece and commentary on this episode over on our blog and also annotated the episode’s transcript.
This week we begin with one of the widows on Elfreth's Alley, who housed a nonbinary Quaker minister titled the Public Universal Friend and the Friend's group of followers. Along the way we will talk about Quakerism, gender norms and gender variance in Philadelphia, explore how the Public Universal Friend's gender ambiguity and religious ideas unsettled societal norms and learn how the Friend navigated a city whose inhabitants who felt threatened by this queer gender expression.
FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS SOURCES BELOW
Originally from David Hudson's History of Jemima Wilkinson, a Preacheress of the Eighteenth Century, 1821.
Full Bibliography
Cleves, Rachel Hope. "Beyond the Binaries in Early America: Special Issue Introduction." Early American Studies 12, no. 3 (2014): 459-68. Accessed July 3, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/24474866.
Larson, Scott. "‘Indescribable Being’: Theological Performances of Genderlessness in the Society of the Publick Universal Friend, 1776–1819." Early American Studies 12, no. 3 (2014): 576-600. Accessed July 3, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/24474871.
May, Isaac Barnes “Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)” Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia: https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/religious-society-of-friends-quakers/
Moyer, Paul B. The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America. 2015. <http://site.ebrary.com/id/11129086>.
Murphy, Andrew R. 2019. William Penn: A Life. http://www.vlebooks.com/vleweb/product/openreader?id=none&isbn=9780190234256.
TRANSCRIPT
Isabel Steven:
A crisp evening falls over Philadelphia in October 1782. A group of seven individuals walk down the city's brick and cobblestoned streets. They are an unusual set of men and women, their leader even more so, at least by 18th-century standards. This person is dressed in men's ministerial robes over a loose shirt and full skirt. A clerical collar adorns the throat, and women's shoes peek out from the robes as they clip along the street. The individual's loose chestnut hair falls in ringlets, covered with a light gray men's beaver hat. Some of the women and a couple of the men have adopted a similar androgynous style of dress, though none as completely as their minister. The group comes down Front Street, turning right onto Elfreth’s Alley, nearing their final destination. Their leader raps on one of the doors down the street, which is opened by an older woman, who greets the group and welcomes them inside. They enter, grateful to finally find a hospitable host at the end of their journey from Rhode Island. The parlor is small but cozy, warmed by a fire crackling in the fireplace. The minister stretches, eager for a good night’s rest before tomorrow's work of preaching and proselytizing to the people of the city. The Public Universal Friend has arrived in Philadelphia.
Ted Maust:
Welcome to The Alley Cast, a new podcast from the Elfreth’s Alley Museum in Philadelphia. We tell the stories of people who lived or worked on this street which has been home to everyday Philadelphians for three centuries. And while we start in this neighborhood, we will explore connections that will take us across the city and around the globe.
In the previous episode, we talked about the experiences of spinsters, divorced wives, and widows who lived on Elfreth’s Alley. This week we begin with one of those widows who housed a nonbinary Quaker minister titled the Public Universal Friend and the Friend's group of followers. Along the way we will talk about Quakerism, gender norms and gender variance in Philadelphia, explore how the Public Universal Friend's gender ambiguity and religious ideas unsettled societal norms and learn how the Friend navigated a city whose inhabitants who felt threatened by this queer gender expression.
This week on the AlleyCast: The Public Universal Friend in Philadelphia.
Isabel Steven:
Introduction
The story of the Public Universal Friend is one that invites us to seriously consider what we know about gender in the 18th century; that rather than being just a rigid binary, gender could be unstable, mutable and contested. The Friend invites us to consider how gender was made and performed, challenged and unmade, blended and transcended, and how theological and religious space could become a site for crossing gender. By studying the Friend, we gain unique insights into how political events like the American Revolution and religious movements like Quakerism influenced the changing social structure of an infant nation and in turn, how individuals and communities were both affected by these changing political, religious and social structures, and how they navigated, challenged, and traversed the borders created by such structures.
Historiography and Positionality on the PUF
The story of the Public Universal Friend has also been one of debate, argument, and uncertainty that began the moment this person first transformed from a Rhode Island woman named Jemima Wilkinson into a genderless spirit named the Public Universal Friend, who was believed to be resurrected from death to become a religious prophet. Before we go any further, it is important that I explain where I stand in discussing the Friend's gender. Historians beginning in the 19th century up until today have had different ways of conceptualizing, categorizing, and defining the Friend and the gender of the Friend. I am no different, but I want to be transparent about my positionality. Some have discussed the Friend from a religious viewpoint, or through the lens of women's history. Many of these historians have downplayed how or why the Friend crossed and transcended gender. More recently, however, some historians have sought to understand the Friend's gender and religious transformation using transgender theory. And it is this last method of analysis that I most strongly draw on, although I have used other historians' research to round out my understanding of this story. To this end, while I agree with other historians that we cannot for certain label the Public Universal Friend as transgender, which is a modern term, I do consider the Friend to be a part of trans history, an earlier chapter of how individuals challenged gender constructs that precedes the modern transgender identities we understand today, and it is through this lens that I present the Friend's story to you today. Furthermore, as we will explore in greater depth, the Friend did not use gendered pronouns, rarely used gendered terms and did so reluctantly. As such, I do not use any gendered pronouns to talk about the Friend, but rather use only the names that the Friend used, like The Public Universal Friend, the Friend, the Comforter, or the P.U.F., an abbreviation of the Public Universal Friend. Unfortunately, many primary sources use gendered pronouns, terms and the Friend's given name Jemima Wilkinson. The only time I will use this name will be to explain the origin of the Friend's story, and any use of gendered pronouns will be contained within primary source quotations.
Act I: The Story Begins
The Public Universal Friend's story begins in Cumberland, Rhode Island in 1752. Born Jemima Wilkinson, The Friend's life was relatively unremarkable up until the near-fatal illness that prompted the transformation from Jemima Wilkinson into The Public Universal Friend. In October of 1776 the person who would become the Friend had taken ill with a sickness called "Columbus fever," which may have been typhus. For five days the fever worsened until the Wilkinson family began to prepare for death. On October 11, by the Friend's own account, the person named Jemima Wilkinson died, and the body that got up out of bed that day instead was one reanimated by God with a divine spirit that was neither male nor female. While gripped by the fever, the person that would become the Public Universal Friend received a vision of two angels who proclaimed that "the Spirit of Life from God, has descended 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 has prepared, for the Spirit to dwell in." This near-death experience and the transcendence from gender it birthed was the catalyst for the Friend to begin a religious mission to preach a message of repentance and the necessity of salvation in preparation for the Apocalypse.
The Friend's genderlessness was intimately intertwined with religion; precipitated by a spiritual near-death experience, practiced through a religious context, and affirmed through a religious community of belief. The Friend also expressed this nonbinary gender identity through dress and hairstyle, voice, and linguistic practices to emphasize the theological essence of the Friend as a divine spirit. The Comforter wore a mix of male, female, and clerical clothing, such as a ministerial robe and collar, skirts, men's hats, and through wearing hair loose and without a cap. Women at this time period wore their hair up and usually covered with a linen or cotton cap, whereas the Friend only wore a man's hat and removed it indoors like a man would. Furthermore, the Friend's particular style of parting the hair in the middle and letting it fall loose to the shoulders was intended to evoke Christ's supposed hairstyle. Doing so associated the Friend with Christ, marking a comparison between the Friend as a divine spirit in a human body and Christ with his own blended nature as both fully human and fully divine. Although many people read the Friend's sartorial choices as masculine, an article in The Freeman's Journal described the Friend's clothing as "being neither man nor woman." Such debate flourished, in part because dress at this time was important in reading an individual's age, class, status, occupation, religious affiliation, and of course, gender. Furthermore, debate over the ambiguity of Friend's voice abounded; varying accounts disagree over whether the Friend's voice was low-pitched or high-pitched, and people described the Friend's voice as being anything from "clear and harmonious," to "kind of a croak, unearthly and sepulchral." What is clear from these differing descriptions is that rather than being a clear indication of what the Friend actually sounded like, they more obviously revealed the narrator's own ideas about what they thought the Friend should sound like based on preconceived ideas about how vocal quality was supposed to convey a specific gender and how gender was supposed to dictate vocal quality. The Friend's gender ambiguity threw all of these notions into disarray.
The Public Universal Friend also conveyed genderlessness through the rejection of gendered terms and pronouns. When asked directly whether the P.U.F. was a man or a woman, the Friend simply replied, "I am that I am." Such an answer served the dual purpose of acknowledging an indescribable gender identity and associating this indescribable being with the divine, as this was a phrase uttered by God in the Old Testament. The Comforter's friends and disciples also respected such linguistic practices, in effect creating a new community of language unique from the larger society that relied so heavily on gendered terminology. One individual recounted how a follower, when asked "where about Jemima Wilkinson's house was [...] replied that she knew no such person; 'the friend' lived a little piece below." For the P.U.F. and followers, to refer to Jemima Wilkinson and not to the Friend was to reject the Comforter's resurrection and transformation, and to deny the theological claim that The Friend was a spirit of divinity. The evidence of this divinity was the transcendence of body and gender that the Friend had undergone. However, just as this gender ambiguity could be associated with spiritual purity, so too could it be associated with sin, religious fraud, and sexual immorality. Such was the case with some of the Friend's neighbors in Rhode Island and many Philadelphians when the Friend visited the city throughout the 1780s.
The Comforter's emergence as a prophet and minister is not an entirely unique event given the larger religious landscape of the late 18th-century that emerged from the First Great Awakening. Evangelical revivals stressed spiritual strength and direct, personal relationships with God over adherence to doctrine and clerical authority. The combined emphasis on political equality promoted by the American Revolution and spiritual equality by the Awakening led many evangelicals to seriously challenge the traditional sources of religious authority and to form their own sects and movements. The Friend grew up within this milieu as a part of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. Many aspects of both the Friend's theology and call to ministerial service align with other Quaker ministers. Quaker worship (or “meetings”) largely consisted of the practice of “waiting” in silence for the Inward Light of holy inspiration to speak through individuals. Though the church often had leaders and popular speakers, they were not given hierarchical titles like other Protestant denominations, believing the choice and ability to serve as minister was because of God's will. From the origins of Quakerism, women have also had equal standing to speak in meetings, leading to a great number of female ministers.
However, it is here that the Friend's trajectory diverges from other ministers. It is clear from the P.U.F.'s transformation that the Friend was not another female minister who felt God's call to preach. Rather, when the Friend attempted to stand up and speak in a meeting, the other Quakers, also called friends, rejected the P.U.F.'s vision of gender and bodily transcendence: "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 … until no less than 5 friends required her to desist." Ultimately, the Public Universal Friend was expelled from the Religious Society of Friends, because of the Comforter's unique and dissenting theological message. However, the Friend was undeterred and continued preaching throughout Rhode Island, gaining converts from Quakers, and other religious sects like the New Lights and the Free Quakers. By 1783, the disciples of the Public Universal Friend officially wrote a manifest for their own sect called the Society of Universal Friends, clearly modeled off the Religious Society of Friends.
Act II: The Friend in Philly
It was during this time that The Public Universal Friend first visited Philadelphia. After spending several years preaching throughout Rhode Island and New England, The Friend and a few followers decided to travel to Philadelphia in 1782 to spread the Friend's message farther. The P.U.F. most likely assumed that the large population of Quakers would be fruitful grounds for attracting new converts. Quakerism had been central to the history of the city beginning with its founding by Quaker William Penn. The Religious Society of Friends had only just been founded around 1650 in Lancashire, England when William Penn, then a 22-year old supervising his family’s estate in Ireland, began attending Quaker meetings in 1667. Penn was arrested and then cast out by his father. He took refuge in the homes of his fellow Quakers and became a sort of ambassador for the faith, writing treatises on religious tolerance and travelling throughout Europe seeking converts. Persecutions within Britain continued, and many Quakers began looking for a new home. The British colonies in North America offered an escape for religious minorities in Great Britain throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
In 1675, Penn acted as a mediator between two Quakers who were in dispute over ownership of lands awarded them in New Jersey and over the next six years petitioned Charles I for a colony of his own. Finally granted the land that became Pennsylvania, William Penn articulated his desire that the colony be a “holy experiment.” While Penn recruited settlers for his colony broadly, and attracted many religious minorities, among them the Mennonites, the city of Philadelphia was dominated for the first few generations by Quaker leaders, and Quaker ideals formed the basis for innovations in law within the colony and later the state. With the beginning of the French and Indian War in 1754, Quaker politicians in the colony were forced to weigh their belief in pacifism with their duties to the crown. By the time of the American Revolution, most Quakers had left government service, but had shifted to creating philanthropic structures such as poor relief, public education, and public health services. Though they no longer held political power, Quakers in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia still held social and cultural capital.
It was into this environment that the Friend entered when the group arrived in Philadelphia. Rather than being warmly received, the Society of Universal Friends had a hard time finding lodgings. According to an article from The Freeman's Journal, they had difficulty because of the Friend's mixed gendered clothing and the female disciples' somewhat ambiguous "dresses [that] were singular or uncommon." Elizabeth Drinker, a prominent Quaker involved in much of the elite social life of Philadelphia, had much to say about the Friend’s visit: “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.”
As Drinker noted, the group eventually found lodgings at Elfreth's Alley with an unnamed widow. Although we do not know any more about this woman, it seems likely that she was sympathetic to the Friend's message, and perhaps a Quaker herself.
In 1785 there were several Quakers who lived on Elfreth's Alley including William Atkinson, Daniel Trotter, John Webb, and Rebecca Jones. If all these individuals were living on the street in 1782, they must have had some kind of reaction to the Friend's presence, although if it was interest, intrigue or hostility, we do not know. We do know, however, that the Friend quickly sparked strong and diverse reactions from Philadelphians. The evening after the Friend's first night with the widow at Elfreth's Alley, "an unruly company assembled … and a dreadful scene of outrage ensued." The mob began throwing stones and bricks at the house, trying to oust the Comforter and the disciples from the Alley, which was "contrary to the laws of hospitality." The Friend was forced to leave, eventually finding refuge at the home of Christopher Marshall, a Quaker and retired merchant. He and his sons continued to provide their homes for the Society of Universal Friends when they returned to the city for longer stays in 1784 and 1790.
Undeterred by the violence of the riot, a couple of days afterward the Friend preached in the Arch Street Meeting House, which was a five minute walk away from the Alley. Perhaps the widow who had sheltered the Comforter attended the meeting, or perhaps she was scared off from doing so by the rage of the mob that attacked her home and threatened her guests. If she did, she would have seen a large crowd assembled to listen to the Public Universal Friend speak. Despite the large crowds, the P.U.F. only gained one follower from the first visit. Subsequent trips garnered more converts, however. In particular, many followers came from Philadelphia's Free Quakers, an offshoot of the Religious Society of Friends who had been expelled during the American Revolution. The Friends were committed to pacifism and therefore did not take sides during the war. The Free Quakers, sometimes known as "Fighting Quakers," abandoned that tenant, however, and supported the revolutionary government.
Ultimately, the Public Universal Friend's theological message was not as profound as the method by which it was delivered. Like everything about the Friend, opinions on the profundity of the Comforter's message were divided. Those who sought a more mystical religious experience found the Friend's preaching to be inspired and moving, whereas those who came for reasoned theological arguments were disappointed. The Friend's message was one that emphasized transcendence over death, and envisioned a world beyond death, beyond gender, and beyond bodily concerns. And the Friend's physical appearance supported this message through a genderless identity. All who attended the Friend's sermons, regardless of what they thought of the actual speech, were struck by the gender ambiguity of the P.U.F.'s appearance, voice, and presence. And many felt threatened by this nonbinary gender expression. Detractors accused the Friend of blasphemy, believing the Comforter claimed to be the second coming of Christ. What the Society of Universal Friends actually thought has been a matter of debate, but there is not a clear consensus that the P.U.F. openly claimed to be Jesus. Accusations of religious blasphemy and fraud, scandal and even murder dogged the Friend and the Society whenever they were in Philadelphia, though little in the way of evidence could ever be found to substantiate such claims.
But why were so many people intimidated by the Public Universal Friend's gender ambiguity? Well, just as the Great Awakening challenged traditional sources of religious authority, so too did the Atlantic revolutions throw into question many categories and hierarchies of power assumed to be natural. Traditional systems that organized hierarchy through status, class and lineage were being eroded, as people renegotiated the political system from one that relied on an authoritative monarch and politically passive subjects to a republic that relied on politically active citizens. And so as certain hierarchies lost power, so too did categories like gender and race become much more strongly and rigidly defined in order to assert new hierarchies.
And yet, even as a masculine and feminine gender binary was being more strongly defined, the Friend was not the only one who crossed gender boundaries, although the Friend was one of the most famous and well-documented. We find other individuals in Philadelphia within arrest and prison records who were accused of cross-dressing. Accounts of cross-dressing prostitutes and female husbands like Mary/Charles Hamilton were circulated in newspapers and periodicals and in popular literature. And for as many examples as we have of people who crossed the gender binary, there are probably just as many individuals who passed, who were never accused of gender transgressions or whose lives went unrecorded.
Ultimately, much of the negative reaction to the Public Universal Friend derived from the way the Friend conceptualized, performed and articulated a nonbinary gender as central to the theological statement the P.U.F. was making. Within a religious and theological space, the Comforter challenged 18th-century constructs of gender and openly crossed the borders of categories and hierarchies of power that were supposed to be absolute. Life and death, maleness and femaleness, divinity and humanity. Next week, we will move away from religious articulations of gender and learn how the hierarchical categories of gender and race compounded to inform the experiences of Black women who labored as domestic workers in the first half of the 19th century.
Next week on the Alley Cast: The Racial Politics of Domestic Labor
Ted Maust:
History is a group effort!
Today’s episode was researched, written, and narrated by Isabel Steven, with research assistance from Ted Maust and Joe Makuc. We also drew on the work of scholars like Paul Moyer and Scott Larson; you can check out the episode page at elfrethsalley.org/podcast for a complete list of sources.
Our theme music is the song “Open Flames” by Blue Dot Sessions from the album Aeronaut, used under Creative Commons license.
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