The Stuff:
This book presents a biography of a religious leader who took the name Public Universal Friend in the late 18th century. Jemima Wilkinson, a twenty-three-year-old woman from a Quaker family in Rhode Island, became seriously ill in 1776 during the American Revolution. The Friend said Jemima died and was infused with a new spirit. The risen person no longer answered to the name Jemima but insisted on being called Public Universal Friend, or, more simply, the Friend.
Even in contemporary accounts, people sympathetic to the minister avoided using “she” or “he” in reference to the Friend. The Friend shunned women’s dress of the day for long black robes, scarves, and broad-brimmed hats outdoors. Indoors, the minister went bare-headed like a man.
Consistent with Quaker tradition that welcomed women preachers, the Friend preached. The sermons contained messages of repentance and redemption. The minister required her followers to manumit all their slaves, because God held all human beings equal before him.
The Friend found some wealthy backers. Eventually, the minister established a community in the present-day Finger Lakes District of upstate New York. Here, women—even married women—could hold property, despite the marriage and property laws of the day known as coverture, or what’s the wife’s is the husband’s.
Even if the title to the community’s property was never secure because of dishonest land speculators, resentful community members and former members, author Nina Sankovitch points to the brief time the religious community built around the Friend as something that approximated the ideals of the Revolution more than society at large did. The minister welcomed people of all backgrounds, male and female. Emancipated slaves, native Americans, widows, and orphans were accepted. Natives who did not join the community were still allowed to hunt on community lands.
Thoughts:
One problem the author acknowledges is documentation. The Friend left little writing. Sankovitch posits that people were drawn to the minister more in person than in print. The community dissolved in the 1860s, but even by the time the minister died in 1819, most of the members were in their fifties or older. One scurrilous biography appeared during her lifetime, written by a person who was involved in various land disputes with the Society of Universal Friends.
This biography was an interesting read, but I found myself a little annoyed at times when the author hinted at things to come, almost as if to say, “Stay tuned…” For instance, when things finally look good after a first disastrous year at the new colony in upstate New York, one member, still in Rhode Island, has a dream (an important portent in the group) she takes to mean the Universal Friend’s dream of an Eden in the wilderness is coming true.
“But into every Eden comes a snake,” Sankovitch tells the reader.
True enough, but a bit heavy-handed.
Sankovitch discusses the Sullivan Campaign under George Washington, which removed the Natives living in upstate New York. The justification was that many of the peoples had aligned with the British during the Revolution. The result was a lot of farmland opened to settlers in upstate New York.
Because this is about a religious leader, the reader will hear a lot about the Bible and religion, the day of reckoning, etc. If this is not your thing, you may find the book skippable.
I liked it.
Bio: Nina Sankovitch is a graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, and has worked at many jobs. Her books include the nonfiction American Rebels and The Lowells of Massachusetts and the memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Vogue, and she is a former judge for the Book of the Month Club.
Title: Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America’s Most Radical Revolutionary
Author: Nina Sankovitch
First published: 2026
Length: nonfiction book
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 