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Saints, Sinners and Reformers
The Burned-Over District Re-Visited
by
Chapter 5
Jemima Wilkinson
Celibacy and the Communal Life
The Re-Incarnation of the Divine in Female Form, 1758-1819
Jemima Wilkinson was a woman ahead of her time. In many ways, however,
she was also a product of her time: growing up in what had been Puritan
New England, she was conscious of the sinfulness of man. Yet as a Quaker
inspired by the Inner Light of the faith of John Woolman, she was a member
of her family's Quaker meeting which did not share the grimmer aspects
of the Puritan faith. On the other hand, she was also to be influenced
by the emotional doctrines and practices of the New Light Baptists of
the 1770s who stressed the need to repent one's sins. Thus she seems a
contradiction as a Quaker and as one who was influenced by the Puritan
concern for man's sinfulness as well as the religious revivalism of 18th
century New England which she encountered among the New Light Baptists
who offered repentance as a way of freeing oneself from sin. She was,
however, to rise above these concerns to develop a new doctrine of her
own. Her preaching was to attract a group of settlers who would become
the first of the pioneers in the new territories which Massachusetts was
selling from its land holdings between Lake Seneca and the Genesee River
in New York State in 1788.
Her ideas were revolutionary for the 18th century. She envisioned a form
of communal living as a better way of life and a more equitable society.
She also favored an equality of the sexes at a time when women had no
legal rights in the United States. The position of women was very much
like that of slaves since they had no legal standing of their own in courts
of justice. They were totally under the control of their husband or their
brothers under both common law and Christian doctrine, and they could
neither hold property nor in times of divorce have possession of their
children who belonged to the husband.
When it came to religion, in opposition to the new revivalism and Biblical
literalism of late eighteenth century American Christianity, she emphasized
the more liberal and gentle portions of the Bible rather than the rigidity
of the faith of the autocratic society of New England's Puritan Calvinism.
Because of her concern about sin, derived no doubt from the influence
of New England Puritan and Presbyterian theology and the new revivalist
attitudes with a concern about sin and sexual license, she favored celibacy
over marriage. Sin and sex had been a continuing and troubling linkage
for many Christian Divines whose narrowed beliefs derived from Saints
Paul to Augustine and later theologians, an influence she could not escape.
Of course, her doctrine of celibacy had its drawbacks, for, taken too
seriously, in time it could lead to the extinction of a movement, as happened
to Jemima's group in time.
Jemima Wilkinson was born in the town of Cumberland in Rhode Island in
1758 of Quaker parents. Thus she grew up in the colony which Roger Williams
had established where Quakers and other dissident groups could live without
fear of prosecution because of their religious beliefs. In Rhode Island
they were free of the narrowness of the intolerant Christianity of the
founders of New England. Unfortunately, what we do know of Jemima Wilkinson
has too often come down to us as hearsay, often started by those who were
opposed to her and to her later teachings. There is, however, a positive
side to accounts relating to her, indicating that she was an attractive
individual as a young woman, although she seemed to have a tendency to
some un-Quaker-like virtues in her passion for clothes and joyful company
as well as being a most capable horse woman.
As with most girls of her time, Jemima had little formal education, but
she was an avid reader of the Bible and of Quaker history and beliefs.
Thus, as a Quaker, she knew that God makes His will known through an inner-light
within an individual, and this was quite different from the Calvinist
or Presbyterian doctrine of standard New England Christianity. When Jemima
was 18, George Whitefield, an important eighteenth century English emotional
preacher sparked the so-called "Great Awakening" of religion in many areas
of New England. It offered an emotional approach to religion which aroused
an impassioned concern for the condition of one's soul. In the preaching
of untrained clergy of the Baptist and some Methodist sects, this led
to a stress on the sinfulness of one's in-born nature, and it could manifest
itself in emotional excesses during religious services.
As a result of Whitefield's preaching, a religious sect called the "New
Light Baptists" arose. They believed in the inspiration and enlightenment
which could come to individuals through the Holy Spirit. For them, only
the Bible and the Holy Spirit provided the truth and all authority for
life. To this must be added the emotional quality of their ministerial
preaching and the emotional behavior on the part of church members during
religious services. The New Light Baptists were pietistic, evangelistic,
and somewhat noisy in their emotional worship. Their doctrine of individual
inspiration, when added to the more conservative Quaker understanding
of the "Inner Light" which came from God, was to affect Jemima's future
life. In August of 1776, Jemima joined a New Light Baptist group and gave
herself to intensive study of the Bible. As a result, she was expelled
from her Quaker meeting.
Two months later, on October 4, 1776, Jemima became ill, an illness which
cannot be identified. Some said it began during a typhus epidemic, some
saw it as an emotional breakdown. Be that as it may, Jemima claimed that
she lay in a deathlike state for several hours or days. One of her brothers
was later to say that she only had a fever, was never in a trance, got
well quickly, and then began to preach. On the contrary, Jemima testified
that she had died, had gone to Heaven, and there she visited with angels.
There, too, the Spirit of God had possessed her, and she thus returned
to life, sent back to earth to make God's will known to all people. This
new Spirit within her was the "Publick Universal Friend" who was to preach
to a sinful and dying world. As Jesus was the First Messenger of God,
she was a newly sent Second Messenger of God. Thus, according to her account,
she was suddenly aroused from her deathlike state, rose, dressed, and
reported the astonishing facts to her family as to her death and her rebirth
with a new Spirit from God. As with Joseph Smith of Mormonism in the next
century, her first recruits came from within her family.
On October 13, 1776, nine days after her illness had laid her low, she
began to preach, her sermons being concerned with the need to lead a moral
life, the dangers of sin, and the need for repentance. She offered no
new doctrines, no original theology. Instead, she offered what was a combination
of various religious beliefs extant in her time: the sinfulness of man
(from Calvinistic Presbyterianism), the doctrine that one could be saved
through the true repentance of sins (from Methodist and Baptist doctrine),
the immanence of Millennial Judgment, and the eternal punishment of sinners,
To this was added a combination of the Quaker "Inner Light" concept combined
with the New Light Baptist idea of inspiration through the Holy Spirit.
All these doctrines thus flowed from her as the Publick Universal Friend
sent by God, and it was made public in what was to become a most effective
and strong preaching mode.
In many ways, Jemima hit upon some of the major religious themes which
were to engulf a portion of the nation between the founding of the new
United States in the 1790s and the beginning of the American Civil War.
However, as one listener said of her preaching. "She do preach up terror
alarmingly." She was a true follower of the new emotional revivalist mode
of sermon giving, a far cry from the silent approach to religion of her
Quaker forbears. She obviously had an appeal, for others in the community,
beyond her family circle, and before too long many became her followers.
Jemima made a striking appearance since she wore a loosely flowing black
robe with a white cravat at her neck. On her head she had a white Quaker-styled
beaver hat, and she rode upon a white horse which contrasted with her
black robe. When she went out to preach, it was an impressive sight: she
rode in her black robe on her white horse ahead of her followers who came
after her, two-by-two in procession. Her meetings were Quaker-like in
beliefs and practices. There were no sacrament, no baptism, no rites or
ceremonies. The meetings involved a waiting upon the Spirit of God to
well-up within one, and this could lead to a public statement by individuals
in her group. Morally, there was a firm opposition to war and to slavery
among the concerns being made manifest at her meetings. One difference
from traditional Quaker meetings did occur: this was the one-hour long
sermon which Jemima gave extemporaneously during the meeting. Her preaching
generally followed Quaker ideas, but some of her concepts were close to
the basis of later religious revivals in the 1820-1830s as well: that
man can choose between good and evil; that Jesus' death was the atonement
for sin for all who accept him.
In November of 1778, Jemima met Judge William Potter, a wealthy fifty-seven
year old, well-known individual in Rhode Island, a man who had thirteen
children and a household of twenty-seven people and eleven slaves. Judge
Potter became her convert in 1779, and he began to free some of his slaves.
Then he built a fourteen room addition to his large mansion for the use
of Jemima and her retinue of followers.
At this time, Jemima came to sense that the Millennium was immanent and
would occur about the first of April 1780. Then on May 18, 1780, the sun
was entirely blotted out from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., a sign to many
individuals of the immanent coming of the Christ. Jemima received additional
followers as a result of this event which seemed to fulfill a portion
of her prophecy. By September 16, 1783, sufficient converts had joined
with her that a "Declaration of Faith" was composed, and the group became
known as "The Society of Universal Friends." Her Society was dependent
upon gifts from her supporters. Unlike similar groups which would follow
in later decades, Jemima held no property herself. All property was held
in the name of the Society by a Board of Trustees.
Jemima's Society, as with many religious societies with a charismatic
leader, was thin on theology. Her religious statements were often ambiguous,
particularly where celibacy was concerned. For Jemima, celibacy was a
higher state of grace, but, as Paul said in his preaching and writing,
it is better to marry than to burn. Thus celibates would be more highly
regarded in her sect than were the non-celibate members. In 1782 Jemima
began to visit Philadelphia where at first she was welcomed by Quaker
groups. Soon, however, rocks were being thrown at her when some of her
followers described her as "The Messiah Returned" or "Christ in Female
Form," claims Jemima never made for herself. Her welcome soon became worn
out among Philadelphia Quaker groups since her approach to religion deviated
from the traditional Quaker approach to its faith. Jemima then spent eight
years in Worcester, Pennsylvania, where she increasingly gathered additional
adherents. Jemima Wilkinson did have certain idiosyncrasies which were
always remarked upon. She ate by herself in her own room with the door
closed, and she was excessively clean, bathing daily and insisting on
fresh, clean clothes, a condition and an attitude not generally prevalent
in her day.
As her following continued to increase, Jemima came to the conclusion
that she needed to create a "New Jerusalem," a communal society where
righteousness would prevail. Such a group would work together as a community,
but this did not mean that communal living, such as occurred in Shaker
and the later Oneida communities, would take place. In 1785, therefore,
she sent scouts under her younger brother Jeptha to the new Genesee Territory
of western New York to ascertain whether the "New Jerusalem" should be
established there in what was Iroquois lands. Their positive recommendation
led to the sending of a small exploring party of three of her followers
in 1787 up the Susquehanna River to the new Genesee Country between Lake
Seneca and the Genesee River to look for land for their settlement. These
explorers were following the trail blazed by General Sullivan's soldiers
in the Revolutionary War expedition against the New York Indians a few
years earlier.
The exploring group favored an area on the western side of Lake Seneca
for their new utopia, and here their member James Parker bargained for
six townships along the west side of Lake Seneca at the site of the present
village of Dresden, half-way between the southern and northern ends of
Lake Seneca, and paid £800 to the New York Genesee Land Company,
a group of speculators who had, against New York law and the Hartford
treaty, leased a large tract from the Indians. Soon New York Governor
George Clinton declared the leases with the Indians illegal which made
the title acquired by Parker for the followers of The Friend worthless.
They got no money back although one of the lessees, Caleb Benton, did
give them 1104 acres in a strip six miles long and 82 rods wide from a
town he received from Oliver Phelps in payment for his aid in competing
with the Niagara Genesee Land Company and to satisfy the Indians.
A group of twenty-five of Jemima's followers began to clear twenty-five
acres of its virgin forest. Here in 1788 the first white settlers in the
western frontier of New York State built their individual log cabins along
the creek which led from Lake Keuka (The Crooked Lake of Indian name)
to Lake Seneca. It was an ideal location since the outlet of Lake Keuka
furnished the water power which would be needed for a grist mill. The
machinery for a mill and a blacksmith shop were brought by great travail
across the wilderness of western New York from Albany. In 1790, two years
after their arrival in this wilderness, the Society had its grist mill
in operation at the outlet of Lake Keuka. It was to be the salvation for
Charles Williamson and his early settlers who were to come into the territory
after 1792, since the "Universal Friends" could grind other pioneers'
grain into cornmeal and flour. Some writers say that Williamson did offer
the Friends three acres for every acre they lost in their transaction
with the lessees. (Two hundred years later, a buckwheat mill stood at
the outlet of Lake Keuka in the modern town of Penn Yan at the beginning
of the creek which in a few scant miles empties into Lake Seneca. Penn
Yan was thereby able to proclaim itself "The Buckwheat Capital of New
York.")
The followers of Jemima Wilkinson had what became known as "The Genesee
Fever," a phrase which had two meanings to it. First, it was a "Fever"
or a desire to start life afresh on the former Indian lands of western
New York where land was cheap and plentifully available now that the Indians
had been deprived of their lands. Secondly, "The Genesee Fever" was also
an illness which pioneers called the "ague," their term for what is now
known as malaria caused by the mosquitoes in the marshy areas of the territory.
As a result, many of these early pioneers were a sickly lot, not the handsome
and buxom stalwarts of Hollywood pioneer film epics.
In March of 1790, Jemima started up the Susquehanna River by boat to
Newtown (just to the east of the present day city of Elmira) on the Chemung
River, a tributary to the west of the Susquehanna at the Pennsylvania-New
York border. It took fifteen days for the trip from Wyoming (present Wilkes-Barre)
on board a shallow-draft Durham boat, Jemima sleeping in her carriage
which was being transported to the New Jerusalem. From Newtown she traveled
in her carriage over rough and narrow Indian trails to the foot of Lake
Seneca, and then by boat up the lake to the new Universal Friends' settlement
at the outlet of the creek from Lake Keuka to Lake Seneca.
There were now two hundred and sixty individuals in this new religious
community, and they soon built the first frame house west of Lake Seneca
for their leader. The house was built one mile west of the lake on the
south side of the outlet creek from Lake Keuka. The house built for Jemima
was not a simple dwelling since it was a two-story structure with a gambrel
roof, and it had nine fireplaces about a central chimney. Here she was
to live from 1790 to 1794; a thirty-foot-square log meeting house also
being constructed for her religious services. (An archeological dig in
the mid-twentieth century uncovered artifacts from Jemima's house there,
and today an historic marker exists one-half a mile west of New York State
Route 14 on the Hewlett Road outside of Dresden to mark the site.) The
Universal Friends' town with its more than two hundred members was the
largest settlement in western New York in the early 1790s. Later, according
to the earliest U.S. census, Newtown (Elmira), and Geneva at the head
of Lake Seneca, would each have one hundred inhabitants; Canandaigua would
have ninety-nine settlers, Culver Town (Watkins Glen) had seventy individuals,
while Queen Catherine's former town (Montour Falls) had thirty residents.
Dissension was to break out in this new community following the loss
of the land purchased from the lessees and partly due to land title problems
involved with the questionable survey of the Pre-emption Line which marked
the border between the ownership by New York State and Massachusetts.
An additional strain developed in the community over the question of the
secular leadership of the Society. Captain James Parker, an early convert
to the faith of the Universal Friends, had been granted the secular leadership
of the Society. He had been responsible for the deal with the lessees
that cost all the members. Rivalry was growing between the secular and
religious leadership of the group. Judge Potter, Jemima's earliest financial
supporter, was becoming dissatisfied with the situation as well.
To free her and her more faithful followers from the land-title problems,
the Trustees of the Society purchased 23,040 acres of land to the northwest
of Lake Keuka at forty-five cents an acre. This was some twelve miles
west of the original settlement at Lake Seneca. Such a purchase could
occur since many of the members of the Society were well-to-do New Englanders.
The New Jerusalem township was divided into seventy-two lots of three
hundred and twenty acres each. Some 1,400 acres were given to the Universal
Friend for her house and for the agricultural support of Jemima and those
who lived with her. The first house created for Jemima was a simple log
cabin with two log units added, one of which served as a meeting room
for religious services. Later a second floor was added to the original
unit and the original log cabin and the new addition were covered with
siding.
A permanent home for the Universal Friend was begun in 1808 in Jerusalem
Township overlooking the Valley of the Brook of Kedron, a mansion still
standing and privately owned today. It would be seven years before the
mansion was completed in 1815, and it was here that Jemima spent her last
five years "In Time," a phrase she repeatedly used since "Time" was running
out and Jesus would appear before long. The new home for the Universal
Friend was three stories tall with twelve windows on its south side and
nine on its east side. Two massive chimneys of home-made bricks rose above
the roof. A separate kitchen stood at the rear of the building as a precaution
against fire which might spread from its cooking fireplace to the main
structure. Two great hallways crossed at right angles within the structure,
thereby creating four large rooms on the lower floor. A staircase landing
above the west entrance hall served as a place from which Jemima could
preach to her followers who gathered on the floors above and below her.
In front of the house and to one side was a semi-underground structure
in which the bodies of the deceased members of the Society could be held
in winter until the ground had thawed in the spring for their proper burial.
The mansion itself became a home for every needy member of the Society,
and generally, some sixteen to seventeen lived here, celibate women, one
a former slave. Some women lived in cabins nearby, and there were many
service buildings about the large house, all of these subsidiary structures
now gone. Celibate men would also live in similar log cabins.
Jemima worked the fields and cut fire wood, and she paid for any labor
which she and her cohorts could not accomplish by themselves. Gradually
the all-encompassing virgin forest was pushed back and open fields resulted.
Here at the mansion in the midst of these fields Jemima was the matron,
the advisor, the aid to the ill. She treated the local Indians with respect,
and they trusted her, as they did all Quakers, since, among the Christian
missionaries coming into the area, it was the Quakers alone who helped
the Indians without proselytizing among them.
It was inevitable that in this partially settled wilderness, and with
a policy of celibacy, a decline in the Society of the Universal Friends
would set in with the passage of time. There were few converts in this
unpopulated area to bring into the Society, there was also the problem
of a lack of organization and firm doctrine, as well as an aging membership,
and these factors led to a slow dissolution of the Society. Litigation
by those who left the Society were to bedevil the last years of Jemima's
life. She was even brought to trial on a charge of Christian blasphemy
in Canandaigua in the General Court in June of 1800. In an outstanding
decision, the judge at the trial declared that blasphemy was not a charge
which could be tried by an American court, since blasphemy was a religious
matter alone, and the U.S. Constitution rightly separated matters of Church
and State. Freedom of belief and speech were essential in the new nation.
On July 1, 1819, at age sixty-one, Jemima Wilkinson "Left Time," as the
Universal Friends put it. Her body was quietly buried, its location known
only to the two who buried her and to their descendents to this day. One
of the Malin sisters was the executor for the Society, and she unfortunately
permitted her own relatives to partake of Society holdings. Liquidation
of the Society of Universal Friends after her death was to continue for
years as dissident members brought charges against the Society. The mansion
itself was sold in 1840, and it remains today in New York State's Jerusalem
Township in the Town of Friends. Nonetheless, benefits from the Society's
estates were paid to survivors of the Society for forty-three years after
Jemima's death, income not running out until 1862. The last survivor of
the community died in 1874.
The followers of Jemima Wilkinson were to disperse in the years after
her death, the faith of the Society of Universal Friends not surviving
its originator by too many years. Many of these former Universal Friends
went into the more liberal Protestant churches of the area as these churches
developed in time. They thereby provided a body of commonsense which helped
to strengthen the anti-revivalist feelings and the reaction against the
religious excesses which were to blossom in western New York after the
1820s.
What was it that Jemima Wilkinson brought to western New York in its
early days, and what was to survive to influence future developments in
this area?
1. The doctrine which the Wesleys had begun and which influenced the
New Light Baptists was to undercut traditional Protestant theology.
Instead of the pre-destinarian concepts of Calvin and the Presbyterian
Church, whereby one was destined to Heaven or Hell before one was born,
there came into general Protestantism the concept that there was unlimited
salvation available to all who believed in Christ.
2. In traditional theology, Jesus had assumed the sins of mankind and
absolved believers through his sacrificial death. Jemima had preached
a more gentle version of this doctrine than future conservative Protestant
groups were to preach. She did not place the emphasis on Jesus' death
as a sacrifice to free men of sin, since this was a traditional doctrine
which had not come into being until years after Jesus' death. Jemima's
doctrine held that the repenting of one's sins and the doing of good
works would lead to salvation, and this was to become an undercurrent
for future Protestantism in western New York. Thus her followers often
became the backbone of the more liberal Protestant groups.
3. Jemima's Quaker concept of the "Inner Spirit," which was heightened
by her contact with the New Light Baptists, was to be expanded upon,
albeit distorted in the revivalist movements of the future when people
in revivals could be "moved by the spirit," often through violent paroxysms.
4. Her Quaker-like avoidance of ceremony, ritual, and concepts such
as baptism, the sacraments, among other traditional doctrines, were
to be taken up by various liberal Protestant groups such as the Universalists
and the Unitarian groups as the nineteenth century progressed.
5. Her preaching which encouraged the "doing of good works" would find
its home in many of the reform movements which would suffuse the nineteenth
century in western New York State, particularly the Temperance Movement,
the Anti-Slavery Impulse, and the Women's Rights cause of equality for
women within American society.
6. Her doctrine favoring celibacy was but a mark of the Christian concern
as to the place of sex in life, a question, as indicated earlier, which
can be traced back to Paul and then compounded by Augustine and the
early Church Fathers (and not to Jesus) as a concern which continues
to bother Christianity.
In western New York, sex was to be regarded in various ways in the
years to come, from the celibacy of the Universal Friend and some of
her followers and the Shaker movement, to the polygamy of Joseph Smith
and Mormonism, to the "Complex Marriage " doctrine of the Oneida Community
where each member was wed to the other members of the group, to the
question of same-sex marriage today. Sex, if one reads present local
newspapers with its reports of single parent births remains a concern
which none of the nineteenth century or later organizations has as yet
been able to face with any degree of complacency or solution.
####
There were many stories about Jemima, some by her enemies, some by skeptics,
some of just plain malicious rumor. One which is probably not true, but
is worth recalling, says something of the matter-of-fact sagacity for
which Jemima was noted. At one point, it is claimed, Jemima was challenged
as to whether she, as the Bible purported Jesus did, could walk on water.
She agreed to satisfy skeptics of her reputed divine powers by walking
on the waters of Lake Seneca.
At the appointed time, a crowd is said to have gathered at the lakeside,
and Jemima preached a stirring sermon to them which moved her listeners
greatly. Throughout her peroration, she punctuated her preaching with
a forceful, "Do ye have Faith?" Worked up by her energetic preaching,
the forcible answer always came back, "We do!"
Finally, at the end of her very long and rousing discourse, she looked
straight at the group and asked, "Do ye have faith? Do ye belief that
I can do this thing?"
"We believe!" shouted the now much aroused listeners.As she departed
with a flourish, she is said to have replied to the group, "If ye have
faith, ye need no other evidence."
There is another version of the story in which the crowd insisted that
she prove that she could walk on water. "Do ye have faith that this is
possible?" Jemima asked? When some one in the crowd jeered, she looked
straight at the miscreant and said, "Without thy faith, I cannot do it."
This is a story which can be traced back to Arabic tales, and it is associated
with Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism as well. While it is hardly
a true event in Jemima Wilkinson's life, it does impart a sense of the
spirit of this most unusual individual.
###
What remains of Jemima Wilkinson's physical being?
In the Yates County Historical Society Museum in Penn Yan, New York,
there is her portrait, her side saddle, her beaver hat, and few artifacts
of her life. Her carriage in which she came up the Susquehanna River on
a Durham boat in 1790 is on display in the Carriage Museum of the Granger
Homestead in Canandaigua, New York. Her mansion and the partially underground
burial temporary burial chamber remains in the Town of Friends in Jerusalem
Township to the northwest of Branchport, New York, at the northern end
of Lake Keuka.
The rest is history and the memory of an outstanding individual.
Further Reading
Wisbey, Jr., Herbert. Pioneer Prophetess. Jemima
Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend. Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, N.Y., 1964. (The only complete study of Jemima Wilkinson and her
followers, a very readable book.)
Cleveland, Stafford. History and Directory of Yates
County, Containing a Sketch of its Original Settlement by the Publick
Universal Friend…. Penn Yan, N.Y.) 1873. (An original source for
serious scholars of Jemima Wilkinson and her Society.)
Papers concerning Jemima Wilkinson are on file on microfilm
in the "Collection of Regional History" in the Cornell University Library.
(The most detailed source of early materials on Jemima Wilkinson and her
Society.)
An early biography of Jemima Wilkinson by David Hudson,
History of Jemima Wilkinson: A Preacheress of the Eighteenth Century
published in Geneva, New York, in 1821 and then as Memoir of Jemima
Wilkinson published in Bath, New York, in 1844 is not considered
reliable because of its prejudice against Jemima Wilkinson and her Society.
###
Brief information on Jemima Wilkinson can also be found
in the following books:
Cross, Whitney R. The Burned Over District, the Social
and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York,
1800-1850. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1950.
Holloway, Mark. Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities
in America, 1680-1880. Dover Publications, New York, 1966.
Tyler, Alice. Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American
Social History to 1860. The University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Minnesota, 1944.
In addition, Carl Carmer's delightful novel Genesee
Fever. Farrar and Rhinehart, New York, 1941, includes Jemima Wilkinson
as one its characters in this work of fiction.
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