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Jemima Wilkinson |
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MANY STRANGE TALES have emerged from the southeastern section of Ledyard, Connecticut, where descendants of the
Rogerine Quakers settled in the eighteenth century, and where
religious zealotry and Sabbathday clamor were for a long period an established, if troubling, way of life. While it is not entirely clear whether she had any direct connection with the small band of "quaking" fanatics organized by John Rogers of New London in 1674, Jemima Wilkinson was surely a product of the region's fervent religious climate, her legend a monument to its very fundamentalism. Born in 1752 into a large Quaker family, Jemima grew up on her fathers marginal farm in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Although she had little formal education, he is reputed to have been an enthusiastic reader from a very early age. Her favorite childhood books were weighty volumes on Quaker theology and history, and, of course, the Bible. In fact, they say she was so well versed in the Good Book that she was able to spout long passages of scripture almost verbatim, and even her ordinary speech was so laced with biblical phrases that it came out modified King James. Sometime between her early teens, when her mother died, and her mid-twenties, Jemima made her way to Connecticut -- no one knows why or under what circumstances -- and came to live in the town of Ledyard. Little is known about this phase of her life, except that she seems to have been regarded by her neighbors as more than a bit eccentric (maybe it was the biblical lingo), a young woman with a mind of her own who was inclined to do her duty as she saw fit, and devil take the hindmost. Jemima Wilkinson was apparently well on the road to anonymity, when at the age of twenty-four, sorely troubled, they say, by the area's bitter religious strife, she took a positive step that would change her life: she took sick and "died." Following her untimely "demise," Jemima was dutifully laid out for burial and relatives, friends and neighbors gathered around the coffin to pay such last respects as they could muster. The hand-wringing and tears of the mourners were said to have been copious -- and, according to some who were present at the services, richly insincere. Then, so the story goes, just before the pine box containing Jemima's body was to be lowered into the ground, a friend lifted the lid so that the funeral guests could gaze one final time upon the face of one whom most were secretly pleased to see pass on to another world. No one could have predicted what would happen as the cover opened. Instead of a pallid face in sweet repose, what should appear to the wondering eyes of the huddled crowd but the slender figure of an obviously vital Jemima Wilkinson rising from the coffin, a blush upon her cheeks and exultation in her voice. If she was going to be buried today, Jemima vowed, she alone would preach the interment sermon. But, she intoned, she wasn't about to be buried, this day or any other day soon. As the startled mourners drew back in awe, the now animated lady stood bolt upright in her casket and launched into a colorful explanation of her astonishing return from the dead. "Yes," she said, "I have passed through the gates of a better world, and I have seen The Light. But they asked me to return to you, my brothers and sisters, a second Redeemer, to show you the way to salvation." In impassioned tones she described the heaven she had visited, the mission she was about to undertake, the souls she would save. The day of her resurrection, Jemima assured her stunned audience, would mark the beginning of a moral regeneration for the whole world. Finally, she begged her listeners not to be afraid, for they had, indeed, witnessed the death of Jemima Wilkinson. "The Jemima Wilkinson ye knew is truly dead and buried," she cried. "My rebirth has endowed me with a new name. Henceforth, brothers and sisters, I shall be known as the 'Publick Universal Friend,' for such will I be to all in this sinful world." Whether Jemima had gone through what today would be called a "near-death experience," undergone a true mystical vision or induced in herself a kind of catatonic trance, few who heard her resurrection speech were unimpressed with its sincerity and persuasiveness. Well, you can imagine that it didn't take long for word of Jemima Wilkinson's unexpected return from the dead to spread through southeastern Connecticut -- and beyond. Farmers and their families rode into Ledyard village by the wagonfull to see for themselves the living, breathing proof of the miracle in their midst. And she gave everyone who came within earshot plenty of the gospel according to Jemima. Tinkers and tradesmen, peddlers and woodsmen, soldiers and drovers began to swell the congregations which gathered to hear her preach. For weeks, she was the leading attraction in southeastern Connecticut, and she might have gone on forever if the whispering campaign hadn't started. "She always was a little queer," they began to say. "Damned work of the Devil," others muttered. "An obvious trick to make fools of us all" still others claimed. The debunking of Jemima Wilkinson grew more insistent as the weeks passed. Finally, the born-again evangelist decided that the time was ripe for seeking greener pastures. Having convinced a small group of loyal followers to pack up their worldly possessions and set out with her into the sunset, the "Publick Universal Friend" and the "Jemimaites," as they were first called, decamped for westward places yet unknown, their hopes high, their zeal undiminished. The historic annals report that the Jemimaites settled for a brief period, probably in the early 1780s, in New Milford, where, according to a contemporary account, a number of persons in the northeastern part of the parish were attracted to their fellowship. Although they built a house of worship, they soon sold the church and their private properties and removed with their leader to the wilderness of Tioga County, in northeastern Pennsylvania. Perhaps the reason for this final move out of New England had something to do with the continuing hostility shown by the conservative Puritans toward Jemima and her followers. Tradition reveals that in New England, at least, the charismatic leader's name was synonymous with fraud and delusion. While the Pennsylvania settlement lasted only a few years, it seems to have been successful in attracting additional believers to the "Jemimakin" (as it was then called) circle. But once again the need to spread Jemima's word struck the activist sect, and once more the little colony pulled up stakes, moving en masse to a new vineyard. This time, Jemima decreed that the promised land lay nearly a hundred miles to the northwest, through country which was virtually a trackless wilderness. In order to show their respect for their leader and also to reduce the wear and tear on her person from what promised to be a difficult journey -- the Jemimakins constructed for her traveling comfort a magnificent sedan chair complete with well-padded seats, a garish paint job and the initials "P.U.F." emblazoned on each side. Jemima was loaded aboard and, carried by her adoring proselytes, she led her followers through the woods, all the way to the northern shore of Lake Keuka in Yates County, New York. "We will set down our roots here," declared the Publick Universal Friend, "and we shall call this place 'The City of Jerusalem.'" And so it was that in the year 1787 the wandering Jemimakins found what would prove to be their final harbor. Given the circumstances surrounding the extraordinary "birth" and dynamic life of Jemima Wilkinson, Publick Universal Friend, it is not surprising that a lively legend tradition followed in the wake of her 43-year preaching career -- and flourished long after it ended. While never as widely known or as varied as the anecdotes about Lorenzo Dow, her male counterpart and contemporary, nevertheless, the Jemima legends were told and retold for generations in the regions through which she passed, from her native Rhode Island to her final home in New York State. In the manner of true folk narrative, the settings for the various stories changed according to the individual storyteller. They were always localized, since identifying a place known to the audience added an important note of "factual truth" to the legend-teller's tale. Probably the anecdote most frequently associated with Jemima Wilkinson was the one about walking on water. Told in every region where her ministry was remembered, the story has been associated with many locations where it was supposed to have taken place, including several rivers and ponds in Rhode Island, the Housatonic River near New Milford, the Schuylkill River above Philadelphia and Keuka Lake in New York State. And while the legend typically varied in other details as it spread in oral tradition, the most common version was remarkably stable. It went something like this: Challenged by many skeptics and some unabashed non-believers to prove that she had the divine power she claimed for herself, Jemima Wilkinson agreed to duplicate in public Christ's feat of walking on water. A time and place for the performance were agreed upon and advertised as widely as possible, for Jemima knew that the effectiveness of miracle-working was directly proportional to the number of people worked. Once a satisfactory crowd had gathered at the appointed hour, near the designated body of water, Jemima materialized, dressed in her customary long,flowing robes, and launched into a vigorous sermon on faith, frequently punctuated by the question, "Do ye have faith?" But at the end of her long exhortation, the question and response having been built to a near-frenzy, Jemima would suddenly stop. With her shining eyes fixed directly on the audience, she then posed the critical question: "Do ye have faith? Do ye believe that I can do this thing?" "We do. We believe," screamed the crowd. "Ah, it is good," Jemima declared. "If ye have faith, ye need no other evidence." With that, she gathered her robes about her, turned with a flourish -- and departed. Another legend frequently (but not exclusively) associated with the Publick Universal Friend involved her alleged ability to raise the dead. Like the walking-on-water story, this one recounted an event staged to impress critics, suggesting that in patriarchal, Puritan New England, anyway, miracle workers, especially if they happened to be women, were constantly called upon to give proof of their divine powers. Further confirmation of this may be gained from the fact that the same raising-the-dead story was sometimes connected with Mother Ann Lee, the Shaker prophetess. Nevertheless, since the legend does bear some relation to the story of Jemima Wilkinson's own "rebirth" in Ledyard, it was perhaps natural for the folk to make her the usual central figure in the anecdote. A common version went this way: In order to demonstrate her ability to raise the dead, Jemima Wilkinson persuaded one of her faithful followers to pretend to be dead. The "deceased" was wrapped in a winding shroud, placed in a coffin and taken to a cemetery, ready for burial. Again, since the demonstration had been widely advertised, a good crowd had assembled to bear witness to the miracle. Just as Jemima was about to reach the dramatic climax of her performance, an army officer stepped out of the crowd, interrupted her sermon and asked if he could put his sword through the corpse prior to resurrection -- just to make sure the subject was dead. As he pulled the sword from its scabbard, the "corpse" jumped out of the coffin and beat a hasty retreat, his winding sheet flowing out behind him like a flag of surrender. One final legend told about Jemima is probably typical of a whole cycle of off-color yarns about her which once circulated in folk tradition. Since most of them were a bit too racy for print, they have been lost in time. But surviving stories like the following lend further credence to the belief that the New England suspicion of the Publick Universal Friend was related as much to her sex as to her alleged miraculous powers: One day Jemima Wilkinson was called upon to pay a visit to Judge William Potter, a prominent citizen of Kingston, Rhode Island, who was feeling poorly and in need of spiritual comfort. The Judge's wife, who had been away when Jemima arrived at the house, came home unexpectedly and found the Universal Friend in her husband's bedchamber, in rather intimate proximity to the ailing jurist. When Jemima attempted to explain the nature of her ministry, Mrs. Potter cut her off abruptly. "Minister to your lambs all you want," the angry woman was supposed to have said, "but in the future, please leave my old ram alone!" In the final thirty-two years of her life, Jemima Wilkinson apparently ministered very successfully to her "lambs" in the City of Jerusalem, New York. As a matter of fact, her reputation in Yates County as a "sincere, kindly, benevolent woman" (so different from her New England image) was such that the town she founded beside Lake Keuka grew and flourished. In later years, long after Jemima's passing, when the first post office was pending for the City of Jerusalem, the federal government asked the residents if they would be willing to rename their settlement: something shorter, perhaps, with a less biblical ring to it, but appropriate, of course. Since everyone in town had originally followed Jemima Wilkinson from Pennsylvania or Yankee Connecticut, they agreed to call their town "Penn Yan." Thus Penn Yan, New York, was born and officially registered in Washington, D.C. lt is said that the redoubtable Jemima Wilkinson retained her hold on the hearts and spirits of her followers until the day of her second -- and permanent -- death in 1819. And while no vestige of the religious order of Jemimakins remains today in the lovely wine country around Lake Keuka, the town of Penn Yan remains to this day a permanent monument to a remarkable and resolute woman, who rose from the dead in Ledyard, Connecticut, captured the imagination of thousands in her time and conquered both a natural and spiritual wilderness.
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