Jemima Wilkinson

Jemima Wilkinson (29 November 1752 - July 1, 1819) was a charismatic American evangelist who preached total sexual abstinence and the Ten Commandments to the Quaker "Society of Universal Friends." Wilkinson's family were strict Quakers; most of their views came from their upbringing in the Quaker religion.

Wilkinson was the daughter of Amy (née Whipple) and Jeremiah Wilkinson, the cousin of Stephen Hopkins, in Cumberland, Rhode Island. The family attended silent worship with Quakers at the Smithfield Meeting House. As a young person in the mid-1770s, Wilkinson also attended meetings with New Light Baptists.

In 1776, a minor epidemic of typhoid spread throughout Rhode Island, and Wilkinson was infected. This debilitating illness culminated in a fevered state, leaving her bedridden and near death. Upon awakening, Wilkinson claimed to have been sent by God to preach his message. She believed that Christ entered her body during her illness and that she was now neither female nor male. This propelled her to claim that she was "a holy vessel of Jesus Christ and God and the Holy Spirit". Jemima Wilkinson became the "Publick Universal Friend" and never again responded to her original birth name.

The year "the Friend" came out, Wilkinson was rejected by her fellow Quaker brethren. Accompanied by several siblings, she began to travel and preach to residents of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. During the 1780s, she lived in Worcester and rode a white horse into Philadelphia, PA to preach, where she drew substantial audiences and grew their congregation of "Universal Friends". The Universal Friends were accused of plagiarizing documents authored by members of the Society of Friends, and Wilkinson's personal "seal" may have been adapted from the Quakers. Several Philadelphia newspapers made a special effort to condemn, expose, and discredit Wilkinson's preaching. Being female in the 1700s made the friend a favorite target for libel and slander, but ironically the grandson of their brother Jeptha Wilkinson would later become the inventor of the modern press wheel.

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