Jemima Wilkinson was the 8th child of her parents' 12 children. In her teenage years, after recovering from a serious illness, she was inspired to become a preacher of the Bible, and adopted the name, the "Public Universal Friend," and was thereafter called "the Friend" by her followers.  By 1789, she had persuaded her followers, who were drawn from the states of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, that they should move into a separate community, a "New Jerusalem," and thus she was the leader of the first white man's community established in what was then called the Genesee country in the Finger Lakes region of New York state.

From p. 32 of the History it says of the Friend's Settlement:

"In 1790 a national census was taken. A return of the Deputy Marshall of New York shows that there were 1,047 inhabitants on the seven Ranges of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, and west of the Genesee River. . . . If we add, however, the Friend's Settlement east of the Pre-emption Line, numbering 260 persons, . . .

Of these inhabitants, there were in Township number 7, first Range, Milo, 66; number 8, Benton, 25; number 8, second Range, then Augusta, now Potter, 38.  This would give us 388 for the population of what is now Yates County in 1790.  It will be seen that the Friend's Settlement was at that time much the largest and most important community west of Seneca Lake, and even west of Fort Stanwix and the Susquehanna River.  It is spoken of in one of Mr. [Charles] Williamson's earliest letters as 'a very industrious community who have already made considerable improvements, having completed an excellent grist and saw mill sometime since.  It is expected there will be double their present number before a twelvemonth.'"

For more information on the Universal Friend and her society, see an excerpt from Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family in America.

Drawing of the Friend's Log Meeting House, built
about 1790 in what is now Yates Co., New York
from description provided by Henry Barnes,
who attended services there as a child