Went down a bit of a rabbit hole over the past few days and ended up reading about The Public Universal Friend. What first grabbed me is that this was an actual name, and what made it more remarkable was that this person lived in America in the seventeenth century, when the idea of changing your birth name was presumably more unusual than it is today.
As I began to dig a little more, I realised there was a whole lot more that made this person unusual for their time, not least that they also became genderless. When you think about how hard certain parts of today's society are pushing back on the transgender community in supposedly more enlightened times, it's all the more remarkable that someone was able to do this publicly almost 350 years ago.
The Friend was born in Rhode Island in November 1752 as Jemima Wilkinson. One of twelve siblings, they were raised a Quaker, and learned long passages of the Bible and Quaker texts by heart. In the mid-1770s, the Friend began attending meetings with New Light Baptists who had formed as part of the Great Awakening, and stopped attending meetings of the Society of Friends. Eventually the Friend would be disowned by the Quakers, as would other siblings including two brothers who trained for military service despite the Quakers' pacifism.
In October 1776, the Friend became very ill with what may have been typhus, resulting in their being bedridden and near death. After several days at death's door, they recovered, but reported that 'Jemima Wilkinson' had actually died and been reborn as Public Universal Friend. 'Public Friend' was a title used for Quakers that travelled around to preach, and this new name appeared to reference that.
The Friend refused to answer to their birth name from that point forward, and asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns.
Interestingly, when someone asked if the Friend was male or female, they are said to have replied "I am that I am", a clear reference to the answer given by God when Moses asked their name (Exodus 3:13-14). The Friend also referenced Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” and would quote Jeremiah 31:22: “the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass a man.” The Friend appears to have dressed in a manner that was neither overtly masculine nor feminine, and styled their hair in a way that defied easy gender categorisation.
On being 'reborn', the Friend began to travel and preach throughout Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania accompanied by some of their siblings. Their message was repentance ahead of an impending apocalypse. The Friend believed that some prophecies in Revelation were shortly to be fulfilled, and two of their followers later became convinced they were the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11. The Friend's sermons attracted large audiences, eventually leading to the formation of a congregation of "Universal Friends", making the Public Universal Friend the first American to found a religious community. The congregation attracted many Quakers, though the Society of Friends tried to dissuade members from attending. The themes of the Friend's sermons would have been very familiar to Quaker ears, as they were very similar doctrinally.
The Public Universal Friend was an abolitionist and promoted free will; they promoted humility and hospitality towards everyone, including indigenous people. They preached sexual abstinence, but accepted marriage. They also taught that women should "obey God rather than men", a challenging concept at the time, and leadership roles in the congregation were often held by women.
The Friend eventually died in 1819, leaving behind an organisation of a few hundred followers, which appears to have lasted just a few more decades, probably dying out with the last of their immediate followers.
It's staggering to think that the Public Universal Friend could so publicly challenge gender conformity in a society where norms were so deeply entrenched. Remember, the Friend started preaching in the midst of the American Revolutionary War. Living their own truth, the Public Universal Friend's rebirth was also a revolutionary act.
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Sources
- "The Public Universal Friend: A Deep Dive on a Story of Nonbinary Identity, Quakerism and Near-Death Experiences" (Autostraddle | Herstory)
- "Twitter has a field day discovering Public Universal Friend, genderless Quaker of the 1700s" (LGBTQNation)
- "Life Story: The Public Universal Friend (1752–1819)" (Women and the American Story | New York Historical Society)
- "Meet The Public Universal Friend, American History’s First Genderless Preacher" (All That's Interesting)
📷 The image of The Public Universal Friend is widely shared, and credited to Yates County History Centre.