Colonial Dames and Good Wives by Alice Morse Earle

Sir Thomas Browne says that "all heresies, how gross soever, have found a welcome with the people. " Certainly they have with the people, and specially they have with the Rhode Island people. The eighty-two pestilent heresies so sadly deplored by the Puritan divines found a home in Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations. It was not strange, therefore, that from the heart of Narragansett should spring one of the most remarkable and successful religious woman-fanatics the world has ever known. Jemima Wilkinson was born in the town of Cumberland, R. I., in 1758. Though her father was a poor farmer, she came of no mean stock. She was a descendant of English kings -- of King Edward I. -- and later of Lieutenant Wilkinson, of Cromwell's army, and she was a second cousin of Governor Stephen Hopkins and Commodore Hopkins.

When she was eight years old her mother died, leaving her to the care of older sisters, whom she soon completely dominated. She was handsome, fond of ease and dress, vain, and eager for attention. She was romantic and impressionable, and when a new sect of religious zealots, called Separatists, appeared in her neighborhood -- a sect who rejected church organization and insisted upon direct guidance from heaven -- she became one of the most regular attendants at their meetings.