Not Your Founding Father

How a Nonbinary Minister Became America's Most Radical Revolutionary

By: Nina Sankovitch

Narrated by: Em Grosland

A thrilling celebration of a forgotten early American renegade, Not Your Founding Father reconsiders just how radical the American experiment could have been.

Early in the morning of October 9, 1776—in the small farming community of Cumberland, Rhode Island, in a house surrounded by cherry trees—twenty-three-year-old Jemima Wilkinson died, and the Public Universal Friend was born.

Old Cherry Wilkinson’s children had already gained a reputation for scandal. Two of his boys had been dismissed from the local Quaker meeting for joining the colonial militia, and one of the girls was expelled for having a baby out of wedlock. Now, here was another Wilkinson child, riding about the countryside, claiming to be a genderless messenger of God.

Yet something about the Public Universal Friend set war-ravaged New England ablaze. The young minister seemed to embody the possibilities offered by the new nation, especially the right to total self-determination. To authorities, however, the minister was “the devil in petticoats,” a threat to the men who sought to keep America’s power for themselves.

And so the Public Universal Friend ventured west to create an Eden on the frontier, a place where everyone would have the right to not only life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness, but also peace and shared prosperity. But into every Eden comes a snake. And soon, financial scams, contested wills, adultery, plagiarism, allegations of murder, and murmurs of another war with England would threaten to destroy this new American utopia.

Critic reviews

“Nina Sankovitch’s extraordinary book considers the mysteries of faith as well as the burdens of being all-too-human. Today, when so many of us wonder where we fit in, it is breathtaking to be reminded that—just as the Universal Friend declared in 1776—'there is room' on earth for every soul. Not Your Founding Father is haunting, heartbreaking, and wise.”
—Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of Cleavage

“The birth of the Public Universal Friend is up there with the signing of the Declaration of Independence and Washington’s crossing of the Delaware as one of the feel-good sensations of 1776.... The mind thrills to imagine a genderless prophet among the brocades and buckskin breeches of Revolutionary America, weirding out the normies, sticking a flower in the barrel of a musket, and goading the new nation to let its hair down—literally.”
—Harper's

“An excellent account… Sankovitch persuasively presents the Friend as a unique force in Revolutionary War times.”
—Chicago Review of Books

“A surprising episode in American history comes vividly to life in this engaging narrative.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Excellent… Highly recommended for anyone interested in early U.S. history and religious movements in general.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“Riveting... a transfixing look at a remarkable leader whose belief in ‘the equality of all souls’ still resonates.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)