NEW YORK FOLKLORE QUARTERLY
Vol. XI, No. 1, Spring 1955

PUBLICATIONS | VOICES | BACK  ISSUES | FOLKLORE  IN ARCHIVES | FOLK  ARTISTS  SELF-MGT | ORDER PUBLICATIONS | SEARCH

NEW JERUSALEM AND THE PUBLIC UNIVERSAL FRIEND
(JEMIMA WILKINSON)
Ruth Upson

A STATELY classic house on a hill over looking Keuka Lake; a secret grave; a portrait that has mysteriously disappeared; a “walking on the water” myth; here a chair, there a piece of silver; a saddle, a coach: these are scant reminders of New Jerusalem and the Public Universal Friend. In the County of Yates, State of New York, today will be found the names familiar to those who came to the Genesee Country with the Friend. The descendents of Comstocks, Hathaways, Hunts, Botsfords, Browns, Potters, and Ingrahams still live in Yates County, a few of them on the original farms their great-great- great grandfathers bought as they came to settle in the land “where no intruding foot should enter.”

Just before the last decade of the eighteenth century on the shores of Seneca Lake in New York State, the West of that day, a utopian community was established by a strange religious sect, the followers of the young woman who called herself the Public Universal Friend. This sect settled west of Seneca Lake even before the treaties with the Iroquois were completed. It established a prosperous community. After the death of the Friend in 1819, her followers had met such criticism and maligning that they and their descendents withdrew into themselves and cherished their own memories of the Friend and her community. They kept their records and private knowledge, and never bothered to answer the critics who had written about them so harshly. Thus the printed accounts even today reflect the criticism, the “myths,” and the difficulties of the Society rather than its glories and achievements.
...

HOME | ABOUT NYFS | PROGRAMS & SERVICES | MUSIC | PUBLICATIONS | RESOURCES | CALENDAR | WHAT’S FOLKLORE? | MEMBERSHIP | GALLERY | SHOP | SEARCH | CONTACT US