A couple of weeks ago in this space we looked at the drumhead court-martial of 19 year-old Philip Spencer, a Canandaigua lad whose hanging on board a naval vessel led in part to creation of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.
But the “Chosen Spot” was the venue for several other key legal cases from the early days of our republic. The first, in 1799-1800, concerned Jemima Wilkinson. A highly important founder of the white occupation, she was also easily one of the most bizarre figures of regional history. And considering the competition, that’s saying something.
Jemima, like me, started out in Rhode Island. After a severe illness in 1776, she announced that she had actually died and been resurrected. This royally annoyed the doctor and the neighbors, all of whom made it clear that no such thing had happened. The doctor, in fact, had insisted from the start that the whole thing was psychosomatic.
But now, according to Jemima Wilkinson, she was the incarnation of God on earth – neither male nor female. Though only 24 at the time of her illness she actually gathered a substantial following, and moved her flock to Pennsylvania before sending a team to prepare the way for her as she proceeded to the New Jerusalem – what we now call Yates County. Eventually she had a falling-out with two of her earliest followers, James Potter and William Parker.
The wonder is that this didn’t happen sooner, or more often. Wilkinson by all accounts was imperious, and demanding, frequently getting revelations that you should give something you had to the Publick Universal Friend, as she styled herself. Along with it she must have been tremendously charismatic, persuasive, and appealing, even as she ruled with an iron hand.
Parker had been a magistrate in Rhode Island, and Potter state treasurer… not men to underestimate. Besides making financial claims that had to be adjudicated, they swore out charges of blasphemy against her. Spotting a constable coming to arrest her, she outgallopped him (she was an excellent horsewoman) and barricaded herself in a follower’s house. The next constable to try surprised her in the community’s weaving shop, but the women there manhandled him back out the door and barred it. According to an old history, “A renewal of the onslaught was impossible without a repair of his breeches.”
Finally a 30-man posse broke down the door of her house with an axe, but their own doctor quickly ruled her too ill to travel. A negotiated settlement left her at large, but committed to present herself for trial in Canandaigua.
Which happened in June of 1800. Courts and judges were on a circuit in those days, so perhaps Potter and Parker had schemed to keep her out of circulation, and cut off her preaching. But court finally sat, and the grand jury quickly and unanimously ruled that there was nothing on which to base an indictment. Indeed Jemima Wilkinson was invited on the spot to preach to the court, which she did to great approbation. The Friend returned in triumph to her adoring flock, which melted away once she “left time” for good in 1819.
To give her due credit, she had opposed both war and slavery (two positions that easily qualified her as un-American), as well as promoting good conduct and celibacy (recommended but not required). Even so, while a conviction would have impeded our area’s growth, this court case didn’t prove much of anything, except how grumpy Parker and Potter were. Possibly it also sent a message to anyone else silly enough to get up a criminal trial for blasphemy.