Not Your Founding Father

In 1776, the leaders of the Continental Congress set forth that, in the new United States, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In her new historical biography, author Nina Sankovitch explains how a genderless religious leader was one of the first people to put those words of the Declaration into true practice. 

Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America's Most Radical Revolutionary details the life and legacy of Jemima Wilkinson, who at 23 years old in October 1776 claimed, after surviving a brief illness, to have been reincarnated as a genderless divine spirit called the Public Universal Friend. The Friend then became an evangelist for a new faith, preaching first in nearby New England neighborhoods and then traveling to Philadelphia and elsewhere in the new United States, forming a congregation called the Society of Universal Friends that eventually created a settlement in western New York they called Jerusalem. “Universal Friend did what men like [George] Washington, [Thomas] Jefferson, and [John] Adams had promised: 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,” Sankovitch writes. Though this utopia and the Friend’s following did not long endure, their story showcases how the American Revolution's era and the bustling city of Philadelphia provided people like the Public Universal Friend opportunities to test boundaries and challenge the social norms of a rapidly changing society.

Excerpt

In the fall of 1782, Universal Friend set out for Philadelphia, the most populous city in America, renowned for its religious diversity and tolerance, and the hometown of hundreds of devout—but perhaps searching—Quakers. What better place to launch the next phase of the ministry of salvation? As the steamy summer of 1782 drew to a close and the fall harvests were brought in, Friend made plans for a different kind of harvest. The reaping of souls. 

The city was larger and busier than any city Friend had ever seen, but at least it didn’t stink, the way most big cities did at that time. Under Ben Franklin’s direction, Philadelphia had been the first in America to institute public street cleaning, which was carried out by paid scavengers. (Alas, in a bid to save money in January 1783 city leaders would fire the scavengers and instead offer “free manure” to any farmer who would come and clean the streets; the plan didn’t work and residents were soon complaining about the mess of dead cats, dogs, and chickens, garbage, and animal waste that littered the city. By 1784, scavengers would resume their roles in clearing public roads of garbage, horse dung, and worse.) 

High Street ran from east to west through the center of Philadelphia; it was the widest street in town and the main thoroughfare; smaller streets and alleyways, lined with sooty red-bricked row houses, splayed out in an ordered maze to the north and south. Leading the horses down High Street, Friend would have been able to see Christ Church’s white spire reaching high into the sky (making it the tallest building in America), while the more sober Quaker Meeting House stood staidly by on a tree-shaded corner. A market warren of vendors stretched two blocks inland from the waterfront on High Street (“Market” would soon replace “High” as the name of the street), where everything from food to furnishings to flowers was sold. The courthouse stood to the west (built in 1707 after colony justices complained of having to hear their cases in a rowdy alehouse), with the squat jailhouse conveniently set beside it. 

A few passersby stopped to stare at the newly arrived travelers from the North, gawping openly at their long dark robes; an observer would later write in a letter to a local paper that their clothes were “singular and uncommon.” But attention to the new arrivals didn’t last long. There was business to attend to and no time to waste. The Confederation Congress, previously known as the Continental Congress, was meeting daily under the tower and steeple of the Pennsylvania State House to debate the final peace terms with Britain and set the boundary lines between British Canada and the Unites States (the Treaty of Paris would finally be signed in 1783). ,,, 

Friend made the trip to Philadelphia with William Potter, his son Arnold (home from college), and his daughter Elsie, along with recent Rhode Island converts Thomas Hathaway and William Turpin. In New London, Sarah Brown, a cousin of William Turpin, joined the travelers. Thomas Hathaway had been a successful shipbuilder before the war, and William Turpin was from a well-to-do family, just twenty-four years old, but with big dreams; Sarah’s family in Groton was also prosperous, owning at least one slave (whom they freed upon becoming followers of Friend). 

They made a striking group as they walked the streets of Philadelphia: in the lead, a tall, dark-robed minister with a scarf at the neck and flowing black hair, followed by “tall and handsome” congregants, also dressed in robes. The robes, while plain, were made of well-cut quality cloth that, along with the fine horses they led and their richly grained saddles, signaled the group’s comparative wealth and status. 

Why did such well-to-do men and women give up the comfort and luxuries of their lives to follow Universal Friend? They were not searching for greater riches or fame or adventure. Not year anyway. What they looked for in the young minister was an antidote to the unhappiness and uncertainty from which their riches had not protected them; they were recovering from the chaos of wartime, when so much had changed and questions of loyalty and duty had been turned upside down. With the war finally over, they were trying to find their footing again: “Thou, which has shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring up again from the depths of the earth.”