Many figures of history who claimed great spiritual knowledge, and grew to develop large followings, came from humble backgrounds. If these individuals had not stood and made their claims, or if they had not been chosen—these alternatives depending on the reader’s perspective—they likely would have led quiet lives, and left little behind in the historical record. One such person was the Public Universal Friend, born in 1752 as Jemima Wilkinson. Nina Sankovitch’s new biography, Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America’s Most Radical Revolutionary, gives an excellent account of the Friend’s life.
Very little is known of the first two decades of Jemima’s life before she became the Public Universal Friend. By most accounts she was an active woman, fond of working with and riding horses. Socially, she and her family were members of the pacifistic Quaker religious sect, also known as the Society of Friends. In 1776, several of Jemima’s siblings were dismissed from the society: a sister for having an illegitimate child, and two brothers for attending military training. That autumn, Jemima fell deathly ill.
After several days of fever they woke up, declared that they had been visited by archangels, and were now “transformed into a messenger sent by God to save the world.” They would go by the name Public Universal Friend, and were no longer specifically man or woman. The Friend wore androgynous clothing, and avoided masculine and feminine pronouns in legal paperwork as well as in private diaries. This is properly where Nina Sankovitch’s account, and the Friend’s imprint on history, begins.
The Friend began preaching throughout their home state of Rhode Island, then on to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Initially assisted by their siblings, the Friend soon gained a respectable number of followers, including wealthy persons who funded the Friend’s efforts. By the late 1780s a large-enough following had developed to send several families out to New York state’s unsettled frontier, to form the town of Jerusalem.
Sankovitch persuasively presents the Friend as a unique force in Revolutionary War times, both personally and socially. The existence of a person who identifies as neither male nor female—or, in modern terms, as nonbinary—was extremely rare in the Western world prior to the twentieth century. It is possible the Friend was the first person of historic importance in the colonial Americas, and subsequently the United States, to do so. On the social side, it can be more clearly traced that they were the first American-born founder of a religious sect, the Society of Universal Friends, pre-dating Joseph Smith and the Mormons by about fifty years.
Sankovitch argues for the Society of Universal Friends as fulfilling the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers: “[they] created a society that valued equality, promoted opportunity, and fostered a flourishing economy based on individual enrichment while also emphasizing working for the common good.” The Friend attempted a “lifelong effort to resolve many of the same issues with which we Americans struggle today, including the role of religion in society; how to balance self-determination and freedom with civic responsibility; how to offer equal opportunities to diverse participants; and the politics of identity. Friend’s underlying goals [focused on] how to create a practical, functioning utopia.” This developed through their town of Jerusalem, where women held notable positions of power, peaceful deals were made with Native Americans, and African Americans were welcomed into the community.
After all this, it must not be forgotten that the Public Universal Friend was a religious zealot, something Sankovitch does not fail to cover. At times the Friend suggested that spiritual salvation was only possible through themselves, leading to outsiders claiming that the Friend promoted themselves as a reincarnation of Jesus. (The historical records are ambiguous, but the evidence indicates they did not actually do this.) While strengthening the roles of women in their community, the Friend may have alienated some dedicated male followers, who felt they deserved higher positions in the society’s leadership.
It can easily be argued that these negatives were necessities of the movement, and of Friend’s unique position. Making contact with a higher power, and being determined to communicate the fruit of that contact, necessarily leads one to make claims that sound outrageous in regular society. Words are forever imperfect for an experience or series of experiences that cannot really be expressed through ordinary thought. As for the men, considering the opportunities afforded to women of that period, it’s understandable that the Friend would utilize their own growth in power to provide influence to those who otherwise would never have it. Obviously these points are debatable, and any historical figure must be personally interpreted by the thoughtful reader.
The Society of Universal Friends dissolved soon after the Friend’s passing in 1819. Attempted leaders rose, female and male, to continue the Friend’s work, but the Society was virtually gone by the end of the 1840s. It seems in the histories of most any movement, at least two “great” people are required: one to begin the movement, and one, often a generation after, to establish it for the future. Taking Christianity as an example, we may say that Jesus began the movement, and Paul the Apostle established it as a large-scale community. In some cases the key follower’s name is lost to history. Regardless, the Society of Universal Friends did not have that profound follower, someone to match the spiritual determination of the Public Universal Friend. But then, to put it lightly, it is a difficult requirement. How many movements are there, founded with incredible integrity, that disappear shortly after their creator’s lifetime? No one person alone has the power to establish their work for perpetuity. Yet still the person may shine out, influencing the direction of history in ways unseen.
NONFICTION
by Nina Sankovitch
Simon & Schuster
Published on January 20th, 2026
