The fascinating story of Jemima Wilkinson, the first native-born woman to found an American religious society, who, with several hundred of her followers, forged into the wilderness of the Finger Lakes region of western New York and founded a community on Seneca Lake.

In his account of Jemima Wilkinson, who called herself the Public Universal Friend, Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr. worked to write a concise history that cut through much of the tall-tales and lore that followed her in life and continued after her death. Wisbey made use of documents which were, at the time of publication, relatively recently available to academic analysis.
Though other historians and scholars have studied and written about Wilkinson in the fifty years since Wisbey first published this monograph, it still serves as a good introduction to the Public Universal Friend. Modern historians, such as Paul Moyer, have added gender analysis and focused on the role of the Great Awakening and the Revolution in shaping Wilkinson, but Wisbey's work remains a useful text in the historiography of Wilkinson, the Great Awakening, and the settling of Western New York. ( )