Public Universal Friend

The Public Universal Friend described themself as a genderless spirit sent by God to inhabit the resurrected body of a woman named Jemima Wilkinson. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Bee Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about a religious figure. That's the
Public Universal Friend, who described themselves as a genderless spirit

(00:24):
sent by God to inhabit the resurrected body of a
woman named Jemima Wilkinson. So the Friend has a clear
place in the scope of lgbt Q or queer history,
but the details of their story also mean that we
need to handle their name and pronouns a little differently
than we have done in other episodes of the show.
We've generally tried to take our cues on names and

(00:46):
pronouns from our subjects themselves, so sticking as much as
we can to what they used in their own lives.
And when we've talked about people who have experienced something
that we might describe as a gender transition, even if
the idea of transitioning had not really evolved yet, we've
stuck to their post transition name and prodouns. The basic
idea is that's who they were the whole time, even

(01:08):
if that wasn't evident. To other people, and even if
the subject's own understanding of their gender evolved over time,
that doesn't exactly work for the public universal friend. Though,
the friends sincerely believe that Jemima Wilkinson was a different
living person who had died, and that God had chosen
to send a genderless celestial being to dwell in Jemima's

(01:30):
resurrected body, and that death and resurrection were centrally important
to the friends religious identity and to the religious community
they established. So in this case, it doesn't feel right
to frame this episode with just one name instead of pronouns,
because that wasn't really how the friend approached their own experience.
The friend didn't answer to the name of Jemima Wilkinson,

(01:51):
and we won't use that name when we're talking about
the friend, But Jemima was still an important part of
this story who we can't simply omit so to tell
Jemima's story. Jemimah Wilkinson was born on November twenty nine,
seventeen fifty two, and named after one of the daughters
of Job. She was born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, in
an area that had been part of a dispute between

(02:12):
Rhode Island and Massachusetts. At one point it was considered
part of the Massachusetts town of Attleboro. Jemima was the
eighth child of Jeremiah and Amy Whipple Wilkinson, and the
Wilkinson's had been living in that area for four generations.
The Wilkinsons were related to several prominent Rhode Island families,
including Stephen Hopkins, who was governor of Rhode Island Colony

(02:34):
and later one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Their farm was a successful one. Its main cash crop
was cherries, and the family was so well known for
these cherries that Jemima's father was nicknamed Cherry Wilkinson. Jemima
had four more siblings that were born after she was
and her mother died shortly after giving birth to the
last of those children. Jemima was eleven or twelve, and

(02:57):
her mother had at that point given birth to twelve
children over the span of twenty five years. Jeremiah never
remarried after his wife's death, and Jemima and her older
sisters took part in raising their younger siblings. The details
of her childhood and youth aren't that well documented. It's
likely that she did physical labor on the farm, and

(03:17):
we do know she became quite skilled at riding a horse.
She was also described as an attractive young woman and
a voracious reader with a sharp memory. She had very
little formal education, but through self study she developed a
deep knowledge of Quaker theology, particularly through the writings of
figures like George Fox and William Penn. We also know
that several members of the Wilkinson family had disagreement with

(03:40):
the Smithfield Friends Meeting that led to their being disowned.
Jemima grew up as tensions were escalating between Britain and
its North American colonies. The colony of Rhode Island declared
its independence two months before the rest of the colonies
did on July four, seventeen seventy six. This situation put
many Quaker patriotism at odds with their religious pacifism. Jemima's brothers, Benjamin,

(04:05):
Stephen and Jepso were disowned from the Smithfield Meetings because
they quote frequented trainings for military service and endeavored to
justify the same. Jemima's sister Patients became pregnant in seventeen
seventy six, but was not married, and she was disowned
for this, Jemima ran afoul of the meeting standards as well.

(04:25):
It's believed that she attended a Revival meeting held by
George Whitefield also sometimes called George Whitfield during his last
tour of New England in seventeen seventy, although her attendance
isn't specifically documented at any of them. Sometime after that
she started attending meetings of the New Light Baptists. Both
the New Lights and the Quakers stressed individual enlightenment and

(04:49):
conscience as part of their teachings, but the Quaker stressed
the idea of discussion in consensus when it came to
matters of theology and determining the scope of God's will.
The New Lights, on the other hand, believed that everyone
had equal access to God at any time. There was
no need to discuss your conversion experience or your beliefs

(05:10):
with anyone else or get their approval for them to
be real and valid. In addition to attending these New
Light meetings, that appears that Jemima was talking about the
New Light teachings during her Quaker meetings. She was also
refusing to use Quaker plain speech, which substituted THEE and
thine in place of you and yours. The reasoning for

(05:31):
this was that when the religious Society of Friends was
being established, people used THEE and thine for close relations,
but you and yours in a more formal context, including
addressing royalty. This is very similar to the way that
two versus zoo are used in French today. The Quakers
believed in the equality of all people and used THEE

(05:51):
and thine for everyone, regardless of rank, and continued speaking
this way even as you became more common outside of
Quaker communities as the prone down to use for everyone. Ironically,
today the and nine sound very formal, but at the
time they were thought of as the casual option. By
the summer of seventeen seventy six, the Smithfield Friends had

(06:12):
instructed Jemima to stop speaking out of turn. That may
have also involved her speaking out about the disownment of
her four siblings. She'd also been instructed to stop going
to the New Light Baptist meetings. Jemima refused to do
any of that, and then, like her siblings before her,
she was disowned from the meeting in August of seventeen

(06:32):
seventy six. There are two different accounts of what happened next.
One is that Jemima threw herself into religious work, including
ministering to and caring for the sick. The other is
that she withdrew into her room and became increasingly isolated
and morose. Either way, on October four, seventeen seventy six,

(06:53):
she became seriously ill. An account that was tucked into
the public Universal Friends Bible calls this illness a Columbus fever,
described as a typhus outbreak that came from the Navy
ship Columbus that docked in Providence, Rhode Island in seventeen
seventy six. The Columbus definitely did dock in Providence, but
it's less clear whether there was a typhus outbreak that

(07:14):
spread from the ship. This same account reads quote on
the fourth day of the tenth month, on the seventh
day of the week, at night, a certain young woman
known by the name of Jemima Wilkinson was seized with
this mortal disease, and on the second day of her
illness was rendered almost incapable of helping herself, and the
fever continued to increase until the fifth day of the week.

(07:36):
About midnight, she appeared to meet the shock of death.
On October tenth, Jemima's family called for a doctor. This
was doctor Man from neighboring Alborough, Massachusetts. Doctor Mann later
wrote this account quote, her case was like one other.
He knew of that the fever being translated to the head.
She rose with different ideas that what she had when

(07:58):
the fever was general role. And she conceived the idea
that she had been dead and was raised up for
extraordinary purposes and got well fast, but that she had
been dead. None of her friends or attendants had any
apprehension or thought of her having been dead, but she
was for some time after considered by her friends not
to be in her right mind. The friends account of

(08:21):
what happened is quite different from doctor Mayne's, and we're
going to get into that after we first paused for
a sponsor break. As Holly said before the break, the
public universal friends account of what happened in October of
seventeen seventy six is quite different from the one by

(08:43):
doctor Man that we read before the break. This account read,
in part quote, the heavens were opened, and she saw
too archangels descending from the east with golden crowns upon
their heads, clothed in long white robes down to the feet,
bringing a sealed pardon for the living God, and putting
their trumpets to their mouth, proclaimed saying room, room, room,

(09:06):
and the many mansions of eternal glory for thee and
for everyone. Later in the same account, the Friend continued quote,
the Spirit of Life from God had descended to Earth
to warn a lost and guilty, perishing, dying world to
flee from the wrath which is to come, and to
give an invitation to the lost sheep of the House
of Israel to come home, and was waiting to assume

(09:28):
the body which God had prepared for the Spirit to
dwell in. Some accounts have the word gossiping uh in
place of the word perishing in that passage, possibly because
of unclear handwriting. From this point the Friend stopped answering
to the name Jemima Wilkinson and became known as the
Public Universal Friend, as well as the All Friend and

(09:50):
the Comforter, and a variety of other monikers. To followers,
they were often just the Friend or the PuF the
name Public Universal Friend, and also had some overlap with
Quaker practices. Public Friends were the Quakers who were authorized
to travel from place to place and preach. The Friends
stopped recognizing the Wilkinson family as relatives, although several of

(10:13):
the Wilkinson's were among the friends first adherents. Those adherents
generally avoided using gendered pronouns or any pronouns at all
when talking about the friend. This was true even in
people's personal diaries or other private documents. Outside of those adherents, though,
people were all over the place in terms of what
pronouns and names that they used to talk about the friend,

(10:36):
and this continues until today. Most biographies and journal articles
use he or him or she and her. Tracy was
telling me before we even started that a lot of
the pieces she used as reference made this all very
very confusing. Yeah, yeah, I think there was one article
of everything that I read that used um, like a

(10:58):
non gendered pronoun to talk about friend, and the rest
of them a lot of them used she, and one
entire book used heat, which I found jarring. Uh. The
friend also started dressing in a way that combined masculine, feminine,
and clerical apparel. Congregationalist ever styles described one outfit this way.

(11:19):
Quote lightcloth cloak with a cape like a man's purple gown,
long sleeves to wrist bands, man's shirt down to the hands,
with neck band, purple handkerchief or neckcloth tied around the
neck like a man's no cap, hair combed turned over
and not long, wears a watchman's hat, and another account,

(11:40):
Quaker missionary William Savory, described the friend wearing a calico surplus,
which is a blousy liturgical garment. Others described the friend's
appearance as being similar to depictions of Jesus Christ. The
friend's voice was also described as neither masculine or feminine,
or sometimes as both masculine and feminine, although some detractors

(12:01):
described the voice as grum, which means morose, deep, or harsh,
but also has connotations of sounding almost demonic. The friends
first public sermon was delivered on October thirteenth, seventeen seventy six,
so just three days after that doctor visit. They attended
services at the Elder Miller Baptist meeting House and then

(12:21):
afterwards spoke from under a tree outside the building. The
friend continued to preach from the Wilkinson home and in
the area around Cumberland, Rhode Island over the fall and
winter of seventeen seventy six into seventeen seventy seven, and
then set off as an itinerant minister in the early
months of seventeen seventy seven. That year, Jeremiah Wilkinson was

(12:42):
disowned from the Smithfield Quakers, and the three Wilkinson daughters
who had not already been disowned, were all expelled in
seventeen seventy nine, all of that for following the Friends teachings.
The teachings were a fusion of Quaker and New Light
Baptist ideas, along with some mysticism. Followers wrote about their
prophetic dreams and their visions, and while the Friend was

(13:05):
still in Rhode Island, faith healing was also part of
their ministry, although that seemed to have disappeared after they
moved on to other areas in the Northeast. The Friend
preached on ideas of equality among all people, as well
as being pacifist and abolitionist, and believed that women should
obey God rather than men. The Friend also encouraged, but

(13:25):
did not require, celibacy. These teachings also warned of a
coming apocalypse to begin on April first, seventeen eighty. In
seventeen seventy eight, the Friend felt called to take their
preaching to England and made preparations to travel there, something
that required a lot of work because the Revolutionary War
was still going on. Although the Friend did get permission

(13:47):
from local authorities to make this trip and started making
arrangements for passage, the trip didn't actually wind up happening.
One possible reason is that the Friend met and converted
Judge William Potter. Potter was fifty seven at the time
and was one of several prominent and wealthy people among
the Friends followers. Potter's father had been one of the

(14:07):
wealthiest planters in Narraganst at Rhode Island. Potter had inherited
his father's estate and had become one of the most
prominent men in that part of the colony. Potter had
been an Anglican, but he and his wife Penelope, left
the church to follow the public Universal Friend. The Potters
became a major source of the Friend's financial support. The

(14:28):
judge added a fourteen room extension onto his mansion for
the Friend and their attendants to live in, and he
housed the headquarters of the Friends community for six years.
He also freed his enslaved workforce because of the friends
abolitionist teaching. Towards the end of the seventeen seventies, Potter
either lost or resigned from his position as a judge,

(14:48):
as well as from other offices he had been holding.
Either he stepped away from them all to focus on
his work with the Friend, or he was voted out
or lost his appointments because of these religious views that
the Friend was teaching. From seventeen seventy eight to seventeen
eighty seven, the Friend was primarily based in Rhode Island,
although they traveled back and forth to other parts of

(15:10):
New England, as well as farther south into New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. The Friend established meeting houses in other cities
and towns, including New Milford, Connecticut, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. By
the early seventeen eighties, the Friends following had become known
as the Society of Universal Friends. The Friends spent fourteen
years as an itinerant minister, traveling from place to place,

(15:33):
usually with between twelve and twenty followers. The Friend preached
in exchange for shelter, also giving advice on things like
domestic matters and farming, as well as mediating disputes they
had visited and cared for POWs and injured soldiers on
both sides of the Revolutionary War. The Friend had also
actively recruited new followers, including attending the funerals of people

(15:56):
of other faiths who had died, both to offer comfort
to the bereaved and to be available for people who
might be interested in their teachings but kind of reluctant
to seek them out otherwise. By seventeen eighty three, though
the Friend was being criticized in print beyond just articles
that viewed their teachings as heretical or their gender as suspicious.

(16:18):
That year, former adherent Abner Brownell published Enthusiastical Errors Transpired
and Detected. It didn't specifically name the Friend, but it
was clearly meant to be an expose of the Friends ministry.
It may have been inspired by the writing titled A
Brief account of a religious scheme taught and propagated by
a number of Europeans who lately lived in a place

(16:39):
called niski Una in the state of New York, but
now residing in Harvard, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, commonly called Shaking Quakers.
Again we always Love A very long and convoluted title uh.
This particular piece of writing was an expose that was
written by former Shaker Valentine Rathbun. Brownell seems to have
been motivated to write this after the Friend excommunicated him

(17:02):
for publishing his own book of prophecies without their permission.
Among brown New's accusations was that the Friend maintained a
spy network to pass them information about other people's sins
in order to bring those transgressions up in front of
the congregation during services. Brownell also said that the Friend
had instructed him to plagiarize previous works by Isaac Pennington

(17:26):
and William Sewell and published them as a book called
Some Considerations Propounded to the Several sorts and Sects of
Professor of this Age. This book had come out in
seventeen seventy nine under the name A Universal Friend to
All Mankind. It was definitely straight up plagiarized. In September
of seventeen three, two members of the society drafted a

(17:50):
declaration of faith in part to resolve ongoing questions about
who the Friend actually was. Some of the friends adherents
described the Friend as a Messiah UH or as a
reincarnation of Jesus Christ, something that the Friend themselves never claimed,
but also didn't really deny. This declaration described the Friend
as quote the Council of the Lord, spoken by the

(18:12):
influence of the Holy Spirit through the Tabernacle of the
Universal Friend. In seventy four, the Universal Friends Advice to
those of the same religious society recommended to be read
in their public meetings for Divine Worship, was published. The
Friend had established meeting houses in several communities at this point,
and this book contained instructions on the structure of worship

(18:35):
at those meeting houses, as well as lots of Bible
verses and other quotations. According to the Universal Friends Advice,
meetings were to begin punctually at ten in the morning,
and people who couldn't attend meetings were advised to sit
down in their homes at the scheduled time to quote,
wait for and upon the Lord. Members were to live
peaceably with all men as much as possible, or to

(18:57):
take up your daily cross against all on godliness and
worldly lusts, and to speak in meetings only when moved
to do so by the Holy Spirit. The Friends Advice
also included several references to the Golden Rule and the
admonition to quote live as you would be willing to die.
In five the Friend met Sarah Richards. After Richard's husband died.

(19:19):
The following year, she joined the Society of Universal Friends,
bringing her infant daughter, Eliza with her. Richards became one
of the most prominent people in the society and the
closest person to the public Universal Friend, essentially being second
in the society's hierarchy and becoming known as Sarah Friend.
A couple of years later, though, the society started to

(19:41):
experience some troubles. On January four seven, several members of
the Society were staying at the home of David Wagner
in Philadelphia. There was some kind of argument between two
of the friends adherents, Sarah Wilson and Abigail Dayton. Wilson
later accused Dayton of trying to strangle her as she slept,

(20:01):
something that other people in the house wrote off as
a nightmare, but Wilson published an account of this whole
incident that later morphed into the friend having tried to
strangle her, even though the friend was in Rhode Island
at the time. This happened. By the late seventeen eighties,
the Friend was also facing increasing criticism and derision in
New England. A lot of it was connected to the

(20:23):
friends genderlessness and androgynous physical appearance. The tractors were inordinately
focused on what kind of undergarments the Friend wore, what
their voice sounded like, and whether there was something sexually
licentious going on within the Society of Universal Friends, which,
as we said earlier, encouraged celibacy. When the Friend established

(20:44):
a meeting house in Philadelphia, it was almost immediately vandalized,
which was the first time the Society of Universal Friends
was the target of mob violence. Criticism and persecution were
among the factors that led the Friend to establish a
community in Western New York. The Friend may have also
been inspired by a Frata cloister in Pennsylvania or New
York Shaker communities, and we'll talk more about that after

(21:07):
we pause for another sponsor break. When the Public Universal
Friends selected a location for their community of followers, it
was in a region that was being described as the
unsettled frontier of the newly established United States of America.

(21:30):
Of course, that was not true. What is now Western
New York was home to the Seneca Nation, one of
the six nations of the hoddanas Shone Confederacy. The friend
was described as being fair and respectful with the Seneca
people that they encountered, but we also only have white
people's descriptions of this. The society's first community in New

(21:51):
York was established in the Finger Lakes region, an area
that was highly disputed Before the Revolutionary War, the colonies
of New York and Massachusetts had argued over whose charter
it belonged to. After the war, Britain wanted to claim
it for the Loyalists and their former Hoddina Showny allies. Meanwhile,
the United States had tasked General John Sullivan with taking

(22:13):
a scorched earth military campaign to punish the Hoddina Shown
nations that had allied with the British. Although the New
York Constitution forbade private purchases of land from indigenous nations,
the New York Genesee Land Company, also known as the
Lessie Company, had tried to get around this by securing
a nine ninety nine year lease for it. Although the

(22:36):
state ultimately invalidated that lease, the company had become so
influential that the state had to then bring them on
as negotiators when trying to get a clear title to
this land from the indigenous population. So when the Society
of Universal Friends started looking for land in seventive they
definitely were not heading to a pristine, unsettled frontier. This was,

(22:59):
as we said, highly disputed territory, and the society was
benefiting from the systemic destruction of the Seneca Nation. The
society's first settlement was on the western shore of Seneca Lake,
with the first group arriving in Their goal was to
live in a truly communal way, with all of the
community's land being collectively held, but that idea turned out

(23:22):
to be impractical, especially given all of these ongoing lease
and tidal disputes over the land they were on. Instead,
every member who contributed money towards the land acquisition was
given a receipt what they're holding a portioned for use
based on how much each person had invested, but all
of the land was meant to belong to the community

(23:43):
like There were no property lines around any person's individual
plot of land. You could theoretically have the right to
a certain percentage of it, but it wasn't defined as
a specific piece of land in that parcel. Some of
the eighties members returned to New England over the winter
of seventeen eighty eight to seventeen eighty nine, and then

(24:05):
came back to New York in the spring. The Universal
Friend didn't join them until seventeen nine. They had planned
to do so a year earlier, but nearly drowned in
a carriage accident on the way. By this point, the
Society of Universal Friends had grown dramatically, with new followers
drawn in by the friends charismatic preaching. The seventeen nineties

(24:26):
census recorded two hundred and sixty people living in the community,
making it the largest white settlement in Western New York.
They had also built a gristmill and a sawmill. A
meeting house was finished in the summer of seventeen ninety
as well. Many of the settlements households are actually headed
by women, and there were, of course a large number
of women among the Friends adherents. However, after this initial success,

(24:50):
the settlement ran into a series of problems. In seventeen ninety,
the federal government assumed state's debts from the Revolutionary War
under the Funding Act of sevent The dispute between New
York and Massachusetts about who owned Western New York had
been settled with the Phelps and Gorham purchase of seventy eight,
but after the Funding Act was passed, Massachusetts currency increased

(25:14):
so much in value that Phelps and Gorham could no
longer afford to pay for it. Land in the area
changed hands repeatedly. Property value soared. The Society's land went
from being worth two thousand, six hundred dollars to being
worth eighty six thousand dollars, and whether the area was
part of New York or Massachusetts was once again disputed

(25:35):
in the fallout from the Funding Act, Yeah, Phelps and
Gorham couldn't afford to pay for it. Massachusetts was like,
we could take some of it back, then, great, give
me it. Yeah. As all of this was going on,
some of the Society's wealthiest investors decided that even though
they had paid for this land on behalf of the community,
they would take this opportunity to cash out on their

(25:57):
investment and leave. It's led to a bitter bitter division
between the community and some of its longtime members, as
those with the most money arranged their sales without regard
to who was living where or where. People had built homes,
or planted orchards, or made other improvements Judge William Potter,
for example, who we talked about earlier, made about forty

(26:19):
thousand dollars profits selling land that other people were actually
living on. As the Society lost control of the land
on Seneca Lake, they moved once again in early seventeen
ninety four, this time establishing New Jerusalem on the shores
of Crooked Lake now called Cuca Lake. The Friend had
started looking for land in seventeen ninety two, and this

(26:39):
time the deed for fourteen hundred acres had been assigned
to Sarah Richards, also known as Sarah Friend, since the
public Universal Friend refused to do business under their legal
name of record. Unfortunately, Sarah Friend died after a long
illness on November see, and her will left the land
to another prominent woman in the society, the Rachel Mallen.

(27:02):
Once the Friend arrived in New Jerusalem in sevente they
lived in a log cabin with the poorest members of
the community, the ones who couldn't afford to build homes
of their own. The Friend had also established what they
called the Faithful Sisterhood. This was a group of women
adherents who were the Friend's supports, circle and missionary force.
Some of the Faithful Sisterhood also wore clothing that blended

(27:24):
masculine and feminine elements and avoid using gendered pronouns for themselves.
The Friend and the Society didn't escape legal and land
troubles by moving to Cuga Lake, though. In seventeen ninety six,
Eliza Richards, daughter of the late Sarah Richards, eloped with
Rachel Mayland's younger brother, Enoch. Eliza was only sixteen and

(27:44):
Enoch was not believed to be particularly cunning, so it
is not clear if they came up with this whole
idea on their own or if someone else put them
up to it. They claimed Sarah's will had been tampered
with and that Eliza had really inherited the Society's land
from her mother, and that meant that upon her marriage
to Enoch, the land was legally his. In May of

(28:06):
sev Enoch filed an ejection action against the community. In
the legal actions that followed went on until long after Eliza, Enoch,
and the Friend had all died. Then, in seventeen ninety nine,
James Parker, one of the investors who had sold his
land for profit earlier on, brought charges of blasphemy against

(28:26):
the Friend as part of an ongoing attack by several
former adherents who really seemed set on just taking down
their former religious leader. Judge Potter was also part of
this whole effort. The Friend was questioned all these addies
blasphemy charges in eighteen hundred. They didn't give a direct
answer about whether they were the incarnation of Christ, but

(28:48):
they flatly denied that they had tried to replicate any
of Christ's miracles. The judge ultimately ruled that under the
US Constitution, blasphemy was no longer an indictable offense, and
the charges were ultimately dropped. The Friend gave up most
of their public speaking and preaching after this, except for
services held in New Jerusalem. In eighteen eighteen, the Friend

(29:10):
wrote out a will which provided for the society's poorest
members until the end of their lives. It had been
signed public universal Friend, but on the advice of an attorney,
the Friend had added the note be it remembered that,
in order to remove all doubts of the do execution
of the foregoing Will and Testament, being the person who,
before the year one thousand, seven hundred and seventy seven

(29:31):
was known and called by the name of Jemima Wilkinson,
but since that time as the universal Friend. Yeah, their
attorney was basically like, after all of this land dispute
that we have had going on for so many years,
please take this step to to make sure to like
not give somebody else ammunition for saying that your will
is not valid. On April nineteen, Patients Wilkinson Potter died

(29:57):
and the Friend gave their last public sermon her funeral.
The Friend died not long after, on July one, eight nineteen.
Although the Society's death book used the words left time
to mean died, the friends entry reads quote twenty five
minutes past two on the clock. The Friend went from
here after lying in state for four days so adherents

(30:20):
could pay their respects. The Friend's body was buried in
an unmarked grave. Court proceedings in the dispute over Sarah
Richard's will went on until eighteen twenty eight. During that time,
David Hudson wrote the first biography of the Friend. Hudson
was a law partner of Robert W. Stoddard, who was
representing Eliza and Enoch Mayland's children in the land dispute.

(30:42):
Rather than being an accurate account, of the Friend's life.
This was a libelous fiction meant to discredit the Friend
and their community in court. Writing in the Quarterly Journal
of the New York State Historical Association in nineteen thirty,
Robert P. St. John described this biography as a quote
and trustworthy narrative composed practically of sensational fiction. In the

(31:05):
nineteen sixties, biographer Herbert Whisby wrote, quote, Hudson's book should
be considered properly not as a biography of Jemima Wilkinson,
but as part of the campaign to get her land
by discrediting her aims and dispersing her followers. Unfortunately, the
untruths and Hudson's book were then repeated in other sources

(31:25):
over the years, and over time the most outlandish rumors
and accusations became part of the lower surrounding the Friend.
Under the terms of the Friends Will, the community's poorest
members were, as we said, to be supported until the
end of their lives. The last payments were made through
a trust established by Rachel Maylan, with the final payment
from the trust made in eighteen sixty two. The Friends

(31:48):
Home in Jerusalem, New York is still standing today and
it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places. UM.
And before we move on to listener mail, I just
wanted to shout out to my friend Adrial who read
over the introduction and overall framing of this episode for me. UM,
So thank you, Adrial. UM and I have listener mail
that is pertinent to uh the land history in this story.

(32:13):
It is from Melissa. Melissa says, high ladies. Firstly, I'm
a big fan of your podcast. That has widened my
perspective in so many important ways, not least of which
it has changed history from being something that only happened
to straight white men. We have all always been here.
Your recent episode on the history of Hallmec, which was
closely tied to the history of land grant schools, reminded

(32:35):
me of a recent investigation that came out on where
those land grants came from. UM and then Melissa provided
a link to an article. I'm not sure if this
came up with the research but was beyond the scope
of the episode, but it did seem like the kind
of perspective the podcast appreciates, so I thought you would
find it interesting. The land grants and land grant schools

(32:57):
consisted of land gained by coercive of at best and
genocidal at worst, means at a fraction of a percent
of its true value if it was paid for it.
All the money obtained from the land grants and some
of the land itself remains a sizable source of income
for many of these schools. While Indigenous students, studies, and
perspectives are routinely underrepresented, this is one of the times

(33:20):
we can actually quantify the amount settlers have profited from
taking from indigenous people's I thought this was especially important
to point out in the context of the protests about
police violence to black and brown people and the reactionary
anger to people quote looting. There's a question of proportion
of wrongs that needs to be kept in mind, as
well as a historical lens. This continent and some of

(33:43):
its most lauded institutions are the products of state sanctioned
looting and continue to profit from it. Thank you so
much for all of your hard work putting out the podcast.
It's been such a gift to consume. Melissa. Thank you
Melissa for sending this email. UM I had not read
the particular article that Melissa sent a link to, which

(34:04):
is called land grab universities. It is in high Country news. Um.
I didn't specifically say this in the episode because it's
something that we've talked about so many times on the
show that I sort of imagined it as a given
anytime the federal government has been giving land to anybody,

(34:25):
like that's indigenous land that the government took, like when
we've talked about the Homestead Act, similar acts that granted
people land, like this was Indigenous land that was at
best coerced and at worst stolen or the product of
mass murder. Um. But this article specifically traces like the

(34:48):
actual land and which Indigenous communities have been living on
that land. Um, Like they're interactive maps with all of
the details. It is important, Like it's it's thorough information
and important information. UM. And I am sorry for not
specifically saying the part about like this land grant land

(35:08):
being stolen land uh in the episode. UM, because I
think Holly, you and I have both had this Uh.
The trap is maybe not the word, but UM, we've
both had the experience where we said something on the
show enough times that we felt like we have said
it already, we didn't necessarily say it. UM. So again,
we don't have a great place on our website UM

(35:31):
to share links anymore. Currently, I know there are still
people who are very frustrated by that. The pandemic sort
of up ended our plans to try to get a
replacement like that. They're just other priorities right now, which
I understand, but I also I'm frustrated by so again.
This is called land grab universities. It's in High Country News,

(35:54):
and it's got so much information about where specifically the
land came from, who it used to, like, who used
to live there. I don't want to say who it
used to belong to because the idea of ownership does
not necessarily work that way in all indigenous for many
indigenous communities. UM. And then what schools benefited from that

(36:15):
land and how? Uh Anyway, so thank you again Melissa
for sending this email. UH if you would like, try
to us about this or any other podcast for history
podcasts at I heart radio dot com. We're also all
over social media at missed in History. That's where you'll
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subscribe to our show on the I heart Radio app,

(36:36):
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