In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with podcast host and journalist Garrison Davis about an 18th-century genderless preacher and their gender-bending followers.
Hello, and welcome to my podcast, which doesn't have a name. It's the Nameless Podcast, but it's a show about cool people who did cool stuff, and we're looking for a good name for it, something that really says what it's about. I'm wondering if either of you all have ideas cool humans did things that were also kind of cool. I do like supper Woodus it is. It does have a nice ring to it, exceper with Deus it is. So my guest this week is not other than Garrison Davis, who is, among other things, the co host of the Very Optimistic Show. It could happen here. Garrison, how are you doing today? I'm doing pretty optimistic? All right. It's when whenever, whenever we talk about post civilization, it has to be optimistic or else. Why are you thinking about it? Yeah? I actually agree with that. Yeah, I know you you are you are you are a wizard's foremost expert on post civilization. If if you if you didn't know that's true. Uh. And we've got Sophie Lichtterman as well, who's a producer extraordinaire. Sophie, did you know that extraordinarire is an annoying word to spell, and I just appreciate your effort. Then all right, well thanks, I even got it right on the first time. That's one time I spelled bourgeois right on the first time. Who I just have never tried to spell it again. I want to quit while I'm ahead. Fair. So today is part two of our two part series on the public universal Friend, which is a bunch of easy words to spell. Who is a generalist prophet of revolutionary era New England. Who is a sort of cool person doing sort of cool stuff, very cool along gender lines, sort of middling cool in terms of being the head of a religious sect. So let's talk about the end of the world. All of our interests are colliding. So so Puff only had one doomsday prediction as far as I can tell, and it came and went pretty early in their career as a prophet. Yeah, that's That's the problem with making a prediction like four years is that you're probably gonna live to see it. Um, you got you gotta make it further further than nets you get enough enough steam to carry you on through the rest of your life. See you'd think that, But as far as I can tell, basically everyone who predicts the end of the world. You're not wrong. They just it just keeps working. I don't know why. Yeah, so they predicted. Puff predicted that the world would end sometime around April one, sight as it's the j K Day. Puff wasn't the only person who assumed it was the end times. Millinarian fever was all the rage, and a lot of people thought that the American Revolution was basically the harbinger of the second coming of Christ. Well, good thing, we don't deal as millinarian some anymore. I know. Well, fortunately in case we do have to deal with it. But I finally learned when the word where it comes from? Well, would you tell I? I always assumed, because I'm not the smartest person's ever lived, I used to assume that basically was just like people were freaked out around the year one thousand or like it's his mills. So yeah, you would think, so, yeah, we're out of years, the end is coming because they like couldn't imagine a fourth dig It's it's it's like it's like the original Y two K exactly why one you read from the same script. I am what's going on? But so like most people who are listening to us probably already know this, but all of these Christian end time cults. I believed that there was supposed to be a big funk off battle between good and evil and then Christ would rule on earth for a thousand years. Yeah, because that is in the Bible. Uh yeah, yeah, I see it. Yeah, that's where millenarian comes from. And good thing that's no longer a big part of our modern politics. Yeah, No one would base their political ideology based on that these days. Definitely not. I would, however, be a hypocrite for judging people for thinking the end was coming in their lifetimes. Sure. I host another podcast that you all can check out called Lived Like the World Is Dying, which is about community behind and prepared right on the podcast called it Could Happen Here. Yeah, So everyone's thinking this stuff. And the thing is is that like all of these people who are thinking the world's gonna end, they're not always wrong. I mean, world's end in different ways, societies and different ways of being come to an end, even before you get into sort of multiverse stuff about whether or not most timeline. It's the most winged thing I think, I know. See, but I know exactly what you're talking about, though, Yes, All of the people who thought that we came really close to nuclear armageddon during the Cold War are like seen as like silly now, But they were right. We came really close to nuclear armageddon in the Cold and we just traded it for another looming cataclysmic Yes, and maybe we'll maybe we'll skirt through this one too, you know, maybe we'll get a new one in a hundred years. Who knows. So a bunch of these revolutionary war assholes, they're not just fighting for no taxation without representation. They're fighting to usher in a thousand years of peace, glory, and happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth times a flat circle. Yeah, and Okay, I'll be real. I think prophecy is fucking boring and makes for hack writing. Whenever I see prophecies in fiction, I'm like, here we go, and I roll my eyes, and if I run across a chosen one, I usually put the book down. Uh, Harry fucking Potter whatever. Speaking of j K Day, I don't know whether I even want to say no offense to all you Harry Potter fans out there. No, they they can take the offense. Yeah, I'm not saying, don't read it. I'm saying people might whatever we're talking about trans history here. So the Public Universal Friend figured their prophecy to herald the end of the world because there was some like Quaker stuff that interpreted some Bible stuff to mean that when women started doing prophecies ship it was a end of the end times. Another place in the Bible talks about forty two months. So Public Universal Friend was like, great, forty two months after I'm on Earth as puff Boom Apocalypse April seventeen eighty or so April coming and going was. It seems like it was probably pretty stressful. But they got kind of lucky for a moment because on May seventeen eighty, New England had a quote dark day when ash from forest fires filled the sky from New Jersey to Canada and day turned tonight. I love when that happens. Yeah, Garrison lives in the Pacific Northwest. I think I sure do so. As related by a soldier named Joseph Plumb Martin, we were here New Jersey at the time the Dark Day happened. The fouls went to their roosts, The cocks Crew and the whipper Wheels sung their usual serenade. The people had to light candles in their houses to enable to see to carry on their usual business. The night was on commonly dark as the day was, and and this is where it was less dark. Up north it was way worse and you needed candles outside. So everyone was like, oh, the apocalypse. And some people are excited. Some people are probably worried. It actually seems like a lot of people are excited because millinarianism um and also their end of the world men a thousand years apiece, I have a really different okay whatever, um, So the the ash lifts at the end of the day, and spoiler, the world does not come to an end. It just keeps going. Yeah, but not for Susannah Potter, a universal friend, because she died on the Dark Day. So a few days later, according to some sources, endoubted by other sources because people kept trying to claim that Puff claimed to be Jesus, but completely likely Puff tried to resurrect their friend from the dead ala Lazarus. The attempt did not succeed. Yeah, they rarely do. Yeah, it's like once I think, um, actually, I guess doctors do it every day. But this doesn't really damage the friend's reputation. Much for whatever reason, the group only grew after the world didn't end. And Okay, my hypothesis is that people come for the doomsday and stay for the community. I mean, yeah, that is this is how a lot of cults work, even like modern doomsday cults kind of function on a similar on a similar level. And I mean that's that's a lot of like churches work too, Like they people keep going because it's one of the only available forms of culture that people feel like that's like accessible, and it's a built in sense of community in an already very alienated world. So that's why so much of the world, or so much of the States at least, like runs on these church communities. Um, because that's like you know, like that's that's what's something I want to talk about in terms of like mutual aid networks. For a lot of the country, a lot of what we could consider like mutual aid or like community like that type of like community support is based out of church hubs. Um. And not not all of them are like shitty to ward queer people on all of them are racist, Like, some of them are like actually fine, Um, some of them are very not fine, but like it it definitely is not just one or the other. Yeah, so it's it is, it is. It is an interesting thing on in terms of like how much of that community aspect is so important to keep the religious machine going. No, totally, And I mean and and people need that, people need a sense of community, and so there is a lot being provided that is not being provided elsewhere. So Puff currently has a cult of hundreds of people, several churches across two states. They're living in a mansion provided by one of their followers. They read dreams, they preach boring ship. Things are going pretty well for them. So in the seventeen eighties, Puff decides to take this ship to the center of revolutionary American culture, Phillip fucking Delphia, the city that does not actually seem very important in modern context, but was very important at this time. And they make a whole bunch of trips over the course of like eight years, and they set up a little satellite base outside of the city. But Philly Billy does not like them, not because what they had to say they say the same ship as everyone else is saying, but because basically they're breaking the gender rules. When Puff isn't cult leader mode, I kind of don't like them, but when they're in persecuted for not being a woman mode, I'm completely on puff side. Yeah, And it's basically Twitter that's fucking with them because this whole democratization thing that everyone is obsessed with during the Revolutionary War, it turns newspapers and from something that talks at people from on high to something that is meant to be a conversation between people. So now you're the fucking discourse and combined discourse with a non binary preacher, and you get drama. I get time to a flat circle as I and so yeah, as I. As I mentioned before, the revolution kind of cemented the like manly man American man and then through the strong women of America back into the cage of patriarchy. Out with the old system where your privilege based on class and noble lineage, and in with the new system, where your privilege based along lines of race and gender. And another thing that I hadn't thought about too much before doing this reading about the American Revolution, about democracy and republican blah blah blah. So in a monarchy, the only moral upstanding nous that society demands is of the nobility, because that's the only one that matters because they make the decisions because the rabble don't rule. This is I'm speaking in rude exaggerations here, but in a republic you've got citizens, and since they're ostensibly in charge, it suddenly matters that they're virtuous and ship So all of a sudden you can be way more controlling of everyone because everyone has to be virtuous, and by the standards of the time, gender bending not a virtue. So people are not stoked on Puff and their entourage. Literally when they first show up, people are so offended by the masculine clothing of the women in the group, which I think they were all wearing dresses, but just not the right kind of dresses. Yeah, the entourage. They couldn't find a place to stay. Eventually they found a widow who took them in, and a crowd gathered outside the house and through rocks and bricks at it because they were rioting over a non binary preacher and somewhat androgynous women showing up in town. But a Methodist church let them speak on their first visit, and the place was so crowded that people were turned away. They only made one convert in the first trip. But they made some friends, and they came back to larger and larger crowds and again. So most of the people who are joining at this point are now Quakers who have been kicked out of the church for supporting the revolution because the passive is m of Quakers. Not only can you not go fight, but you also can't pay taxes to the revolutionary government because that's like taking sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seven. The newspapers are attacking Puff, calling them crazy, calling them a blasphemer, accusing them of all kinds of various crimes. Angry mobs show up everywhere Puff stays or speaks, and again, not because what they're saying, but because of how they're dressed, because things don't change. One thing that the newspaper is really the letter sections all agreed on, though, is that Puff was really hot. They all, yeah, I'm I'm good that at least that is. It's noted within the history of books. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's it's always very important that uh they all gender friend wrong, and page after page talked about their hair falling down in black ringlets and how beautiful their faces or whatever. Someone that they perceived as a woman dressed like a man and beautiful and preaching. It's all too much for them. They can't handle it. And like, I think one of the reasons that so many people hate trans people is because they're attracted to us and fox with them. Yeah exactly. Yeah. Even the long hair falling down to their shoulders, that was actually a masculine thing. Women mostly kept their hair hidden under caps, except some rich ladies who kept it piled up on top of their heads. But long hair hanging down, that's a man's haircut. Hm. And so public conjecture about whether or not women, or in this case people presume to be women, are hot. This always has ulterior motives. Right, most transparently, they're saying, well, this person can't be non binary. I want to suck them. But it's also tied into the narrative that puff in their congregation. We're all seducers, planning to lead people astray with their evil, evil attractiveness. I mean me too, but I don't think that was what they were interested in. Yeah, it's really kind of rumor discourse, Yeah, basically, but just funny because almost everyone who joins the congregation does so with their families. They bring their spouses, their siblings, whatever. But the public narrative is that this evil bitch is going to get women to leave their husbands and men to leave their wives, which happens, but it's usually because people didn't want to be in those marriages anyway. And the only like religious complaint that I really came up with is that men shouldn't subordinate themselves to women. So even their religious complaint is still just a gender and they're convinced either Puff and all their followers or delusional or their the Inner circle or grifters. These are the only two possibilities. And to be fair, I think you could say that about it like every fucking Christian denomination going on at this time, to various degrees of accuracy. I mean, that is kind of the classical thing with Yeah, that is like one of one of the oldest coin tosses. Yeah. But what's funny is that the Society for Universal Friends wasn't either of these things. As far as I can tell, I think they knew exactly what they were doing. Um. I mean, depending on how you want to judge Puff's interpretation of their own identity as a divine bean or whatever, but not a not a grifter. Um. Certainly not to any kind of scale. And I don't know, maybe it's like a little bit of each, but mostly not none of either. And the thing that I find so interesting about them getting like run the funk out of Philly is that in these rural backwaters everyone's like, well, this person wears weird clothes and has a really fucking weird name, but whatever. I like what they have to say. And then the center culture and politics of the New world is like, no, our little brands are breaking And I feel like this like says a lot about how people today still make assumptions that rural communities are inherently backwards. Yeah, as a ural queer person, I like pointing this out a lot. I don't know, so dealing with all this bullshit, all the angry mobs and ship it's too much and puffs. Fourth and final trip to Philly was a momentary thing under the radar, just passing through the city successfully drove them out, not by using cr gas. But if today you wanted to drive non binary preachers out of your city, you might choose to use CR gas. I mean, actually shouldn't either, and if you do, you should do c S gas. But you know, oh, you mean you mean this this? Oh I thought that was a water bottle, but yes, that is I mean, whoa Okay, so Garrison is holding up a water bottle that is printed like a is it CR gas or c S gas? This is yes, okay, this is a forty millimeter pot dispersion round made by defense technology, one of the I'm not going to one of the defense one of our sponsors. Nope, this isn't behind the basic we're wholesome here, wholesome one of our enemies, defense technology. That's right, holding one of our friends. Tap water publicly available more or less free, and should be protected. I mean, I feel like the I feel I've tried really hard to buy tear gas before, and it's challenging. Um I think we should de regulate tear gas to make it available for civilian purchase, because then people can start using it and things would be more interesting because right now only cops can buy it in most cases. Um, So if it becomes a public utility, I think some real progress could happen. So c S gas on tap in every home? Is that what you're saying? Yes, That's what I'm saying. I rarely look around two and thank to myself, society is not currently interesting enough. But to be fair, things could always be more interesting. We certainly could, and you know who probably will or won't make things more interesting are the rest of the sponsors the Today Show. Okay, and we are back, and our heroes have just been driven with rocks and bricks out of the city for being Yeah, I was, I was. I was wondering if they got stoned at all, because that is definitely I'm not aware of them actually suffering physical violence as a result of their gender presentation. So it's better in colonial America anyway. So they say, all right, fuck it, let's go rural, and let's go to the edge of colonial control what they consider the edge of civilization Western New York. Sure. Starting in the mid eighties, Puffs Crew started heading out west to the frontier to scope out spots to start a settlement. They sold all their ship all the like meeting houses in Rhode Island in Connecticut or whatever, and they bought some land fourteen thousand acres. A few families go ahead and they start building. Then on February nine, Puff and Puffs buds about sixty families and all head out to the frontier and wagons and treacherous roads doing the work of colonization, and for all their anti racist principles. I mean, in the thirty years or so after independence, the US expanded westward so fast that it's stole more territory than had had stolen in the entire two hundred years prior. And the indigenous people who sided with the British crown were probably right about which party to back. So off they go into the quote unquote wilderness and set up a settlement called Okay, they're really original namers. It's called Friends Settlement. They really did get what a convention would be like, yep, this is the one. Yeah, we just think literal yeah. And so they're over in the Finger Lakes chunk of western New York and an area that colonial armies had laid waste to the hode and a showne on the folks who had had sided with the British, and they had destroyed entire communities and fields and ship And it was those soldiers who came back with detailed maps of where there was fertile soil that spurred the push of settlers into the area. MH. But I will say it's it's easy a sitting judgment of people like Puff who are well meaning and go off and settle stolen land growing crops in the ashes of genocide. But I'm a white settler to I live on Maso Womack Land, and in my head, I'm like, well, I didn't do the steel, and it was stolen hundreds of years ago, but I live with the privilege that came from it having been stolen by people who look like me. And I'm not the best person to articulate any of the stuff I'm talking about right now, but I think it's worth thinking about whenever one we should be aware of people are not going off into like Virgin territory or whatever, and to like how we sit, you know, hundreds of years later in that sense. So that's where the public universal friend goes traveling preacher time is over. Now it's time for everyone to live in perfect bliss and harmony under God's law a k a. Puff law. But they fucked up the land purchase because the ship was hotly contested, super shady there in court constantly for it, which is like funny because I don't think of like when I'm like, ah, we're off to go settle the wilderness. I don't think like and I'm going to be in court constantly about exactly where the boundaries are of my property or whatever. They buy their own land three times from three different people. They clear the forest, they plant crops, They live off of bottled milk and hard times, and like all rugged frontiersman, this is a story that gets talked about a lot. People definitely talk about this part. They subsist off of government subsidies. When there's famine and everyone out involved in the new land rush starts going hungry because more people are going and they can possibly grow food in time. And I don't think there's any shame in the help. But I just think I pointed out because you have this like rugged individualist myth American doing it yourself, traveling the bar and waste land where no soul has ever stepped before. Too. Uh huh. Yeah, exactly. None of that is richt at all. Yeah, with a map of where all the fertile fields are, because you've destroyed all of the ones that were owned by the other people. And then as soon as you get there, you turn around and the government gives you handouts in order to help you do this work. Yeah, sixty people by eight and it's the largest white settlement in Western New York. And some sources say that they were friendly with the indigenous people of the area and defended them, but I don't know whether that means physically or verbally. And I see vague references to how the Universal Friends stuck up for them here and there in court, but I can't find any details of that. And I think everyone either wants to vilify Puff for being an evil cross stresser or wants to heroize Puff for being a virtuous trans ancestor. So it's really hard to figure out what's what right. Um, the queer icon crowd wants to downplay their colonial nous, and I mean, I know, I want Puffed to have been doing good stuff. I get really sad when I'm like, and then here's their dumb rules and then here's their dumb fucking whiteness and all this ship. But who knows. They did go along in to help sign some treaties with the Hodna Shawnee that were like, they were there in like a in a reasonably good sense, and they were personally well received by the Hoda Shawnee. But I don't fucking no overall. In addition to fucking up their land purchase, they also fucked up the communal living thing because they're Americans and they care about capital p property. So when they pulled their funds to buy the parcel of land, they then parceled it back out to people based on how much they contributed. And why did this funk everyone up? Because gentrification the price of land skyrocketed. The rich people were suddenly able to sell out everyone else, so they did. All the rich people conspired and took control of almost all the property they had bought, and then they leveraged it and they sold it and they all became real estate prospectors. This is not puff. This is like the fucking judge and all these other fucking assholes. And they made banks selling all the stolen land like they brought back like ten times their own investment in only a couple of years. Tell me, it's a story that you've heard before. It's like a if a house full of mostly white queers moved to a non white, gentrifying neighborhood and then the rich ones among them flipped the house a couple of years in and fucked over everyone else. Yeah, and then the whole neighborhoods full of yep yep. So that's what the first non baronary cult America did. Yeah, that is, um, not much has changed. That seems to be the theme of the theme of this episode is that not much of queer culture has changed. Yeah, at least white queer culture. Yeah, well why, I don't know whether it's changed, whether non white queer culture changed. So I feel like there's one lesson I've learned while researching the show. It's that you've got to rob the rich people. They can't just stay rich and be like, oh, it's cool, Well, I'll just act like equals. The Paris Commune should have robbed the bank, and the Society of Universal Friends should have said, if you want to be equals, then you've gotta be fucking equals and have the land held in trust between all of us. You don't got to kill the rich, you don't even have to punish them. You just have to stop them being richer than other people. That's that's the lesson that I've learned so far old researching. Yeah, or else, eventually they'll bulldoze all that low income housing to put up a fancy coffee shop. Yeah, and a four for one of those one of those four story apartment buildings. Actually what they built was the first grist mill and timber mill. Ah uh. And so the judge, guy Potter, he put up most of the money, and he was if anyone was grifting this whole time, it was probably him. He probably wasn't grifting. He probably was like okay, whatever I mean, he was a jug. It's it's yeah. Um. So soon him and his son's own fifty five acres and seventeen investors get the whole chunk of society land. They own all of Friends Settlement and everyone else is basically fucked. I feel like that shouldn't be allowed. You shouldn't be allowed to own land, especially that much. Yeah. Are you saying that people shouldn't be allowed to own more than they use of land? Pretty much? Yeah, you shouldn't shouldn't own it in the first place. But yeah, with a different conception of ownership maybe um yeah yeah yeah. Also really importantly, Friends Settlement, they could have been Frenton. Frenton would have been cool friend and town. Yeah, town of friends. Okay. So so Puff and company they move again, this time to get away from those greedy assholes, and they settle a new place called New Jerusalem or sometimes just Jerusalem, Okay, which is deviating a little bit from their naming standard. But yeah, not a not a giant fan though, No, no, I'm not a big fan. So here's another thing that will sound unfamiliar to you. Puff wouldn't sign their dead names to any of the documents based so their life companion, who never gets called that, but was clearly that Sarah Richards, signs for the whole thing. And then Sarah Richards, the second in charge, she goes and dies of being alive in the eighteenth century. I guess she's thirty six and she's in ill health. So she dies At the new spot. They build Puff a house and then all the single celibate women live there together. And and because Puff was so otherworldly, they didn't eat with everyone else. They took their meals privately with another woman, their new second in command. Uh huh. So it really really sounds like I'm describing a gay eighteenth century cult. Yes they might have been, but if they were, they probably were less the queer orgies type and more the secret gay marriages type. Yeah, I mean, with their celibacy stuff, It's really interesting because who knows if they would have considered lesbian sex to actually be sex at all, Like it's I I wonder how I'm not I'm not like a sex historian, um, but I wonder how that would have been framed. Now, I don't know. I think I think it would have still been seen bad, but I'm not sure, because their problem was less pro creation like they are. Actually instead of saying maritle sexes for procreation, they were saying maritle sexes a safe container within which to hold your horrible, horrible, evil lust carnal desires. Okay, okay, so if you're going to fox someone, you should suck your spouse or whatever. Right that That's at least what as far as I can tell, puff was very consistent about publicly. So they go off and they they have um New Jerusalem, and even in the fucking woods, they can't get away from judgment. People would come and visit the weird quote lady preacher like basically as a tourist attraction and write essays about how they don't like puff Um once again, not for religious doctrine, just for not being ladylike, and sometimes for like not eating dinner with them. Yeah, it's it's just like queer freak show type stuff. And then they would also write complaining about how sometimes husbands weren't the head of the households, sometimes the wives didn't have children. A lot of places claimed that the whole society died out because they didn't have any children at all, but that's actually not true. That they did have children. It wasn't a total celibacy thing. They just didn't have funk off numbers of children, like they didn't have most of them didn't have like thirteen children. So the average household in the society had four children, and the average household elsewhere in the area had seven. And most most parents had their kids before joining. If you joined without kids and then had kids in the cult, you would end up with two point five of them. Well average wouldn't theoretically end up with a kid, I mean who knows. Yeah, and actually there and so there's all these stories also about unmarried folks living together, which sort of throws a wrench in the whole like how they viewed celibacy thing. And there's also story stories about men not giving a ship if their wives had kids with other men. And it's like these are thrown as like tiny little practically footnotes and all these history books. And it's so annoying because I'm like, you're describing a gay polly cult. Just fucking do it. Just tell me, tell me what happened, commit to the bit. Yeah, and Puff was a disciplinarian, but a goofy. One one guy might have been a boy climbed a tree to peek into a women's bedroom at the main house where the celibate women all lived. And he fell and he broke his shoulder. And when he and when he was confronted about how he broke his shoulder, he was like, I was peeking into the windows. So so Puff made him wear a cowbell around his neck for months. That's funny. Um. One woman laughed too much, which was in pious of her, and had her mouth sealed up with strips of paper temporarily. Oh no. Yeah, And one man was forced to wear a woman's cap for a while in public to humiliate him. And I have no idea what his offense was. Yes, it's yeah, classic, but like this feels like the cult leader version of those people who take pictures of their Instagram pictures of their dogs holding up like shame signs. You know, it's it's cringe e. But it's not as bad as a lot of other things that are happening in the area. Like this idiosyncratic discipline probably makes them one of the least authoritarian sects in America. Yeah, it's also possible that none of the discipliney happened. There's so many people who are committed to follow in too, like like people are just like committed to proving that Puff is like a monster, and so there's so much ship written about puffing and print and also in these rumors, there's rumors that I believe sometimes come from people who later left the group, that both men and women were sneaking into Puff's bed at night. Once again, tiny throwaway lines. Yeah, the settlement lasted for decades but never grew. It just slowly declined. Um they were too isolated to gain new recruits. Existing believers started to drift away, especially the rich men, basically the people who had a lot to lose. And it wasn't even like most of the men left, but almost everyone who left were men. One guy, one of the real estate prospecting potter boys, managed to get the friend arrested because okay, so so Puff gave puff sister a horse, but the sister was married to a potter boy. So then Puff asked for the horseback and the sister gave it back but didn't ask the husband first. So that's stealing because the wife's property is the husband was the husband's property. Yeah. Yeah, and Puff refused to cooperate with the warrants at all at first because it was in their dead name. And finally they like went down to the court house and posted their own bail under the name of ye universal Friend commonly called Jemima Wilkinson, which is how they basically handled it every time they were like forced to use their dead name. Eventually, in sev another warrant went out for the public Universal Friend, this time for the charge of blasphemy. Basically, people were like, Puff is claiming to be Jesus and Puff was probably not claiming to be Jesus. Puff was kind of into the like sometimes it was sort of neither confirmed nor deny being Jesus, but mostly was like, I am Jesus's messenger. But people figured if they claimed that Puff claimed to be Jesus, they would get more headway. Yeah, and Puff didn't want to go to court or jail, so Puff refused to let them for a while. The first time someone came to rest Puff, Puff fucked off at a gallop and outran their pursuers. The second time, two men showed up at the friend at Friend's house to arrest them, and the celibate women who lived there surrounded the men, ripped their clothes, and physically threw them out of the house. Cool. Eventually it took a posse of thirty men to arrest Puff. Almost all of them were people who had the men who had left the society. They broke down the door of Puff's house with a fucking axe in the middle of the night. They found Puff in too poor health to travel, and so Puff was like, all right, fine, look y'all fucking win. I'll turn myself in the morning. And they were like, oh, yeah, okay, you can turn yourself in the morning. But you know it won't turn you in unless you know what loone snitch on you and get you taken away by a posse. If any if any of the ads that follow are likely to turn you in, we're sorry, and you can send your comploints to at a writing quay. Yeah, it totally will get the notification and here's some ads today, and we are back and Puff actually does go turn themselves in in the morning. I believe, uh the charges blasphemy And basically everyone is mostly mad that Puff is upsetting, even though like legal court, Stuff is saying that Puff is upsetting the proper social order of who's supposed to be in charge. But there's only one problem with their case against Puff. Blasphemy is not a crime. Even back then in New York, blasphemy not a crime. And it took a year for the indictment to fall through, dear God, even though it's literally not a crime. It's like if someone showed up and was like, you, ma'am, have painted your bedroom read? And I was like no, And then I got charged tragged off the court. Uh so eventually, but while they were in court and the judges were like, this isn't even a crime more, sorry, do you want to give a sermon instead of a defense? And Puff was like I do, and stood up and gave a sermon and everyone in court agreed. It was a perfectly fine sermon because at the end of the taste is not theologically radical at all. I mean, it'd be cooler if they were, you know. But so then the anti puff faction of these rich, politically connected men, they keep doing other ship and their quest to destroy the society and return the rule of men. And this is like, this is about that. It's also a land grab. But these are the people who have already grabbed tons of land. This is like they're mad that they were emasculated by not being in charge for a while. They sue over land dispute, some of its petty. Some of it ends up evicting and a bunch of society folks from their homes, leaves people in debtors prison, and the fate of Jerusalem itself was taken at a court thanks to more fuckory and patriarchal interpretations of property law because the signer Sarah Richards, who is dead now, had been the legal property owner and her kid, Eliza's husband Enoch tried to grab all the property. And I just want to take a moment here to appreciate how cool the name Enoch is. I mean, Enoch is is the class a classically cool name. Shout out to all the Enoch's listening. You've got a cool name. Shout out to the Book of Enoch, which I totally know it is. Is that a Bible thing? Kind of it's the Bible but weirder? Huh? Okay, yeah, ever heard of like Anochian magic? No, it's the stuff John d practiced. It's based on the Book of Enoch. It's like, it's it's it's it's the weirdest you can go while still kind of under Judaism or Christianity. Okay, okay, it sounds ali adjacent to me. So this Enoch no good trying to funk over everyone and basically steal a bunch of ships. And so the society argues that Sarah Richards yes had signed a paperwork, but it was just in trust for the society and for Puff. And it took a fucking like decade or maybe I don't know, some longest number of years in court, tons of appeals. The society wins and they get to keep their town, and it bankrupts them and trust is like broken, and tons of people have left and everyone's upset. It doesn't destroy the society, but it deals at a blow from which it never really recovers. And Puff was forty three years old when they died in eighteen nineteen from heart disease after years of infirmity. The body they were in was older than that, like sixty six years old total. And their followers put Puff's body in a box full of lime in the basement just in case, you know, Puff might get resurrected. They were like, this is not happening again. Yeah, um. And so after a couple of years, when Puff doesn't come back from the dead, two men carry the body off and buried in an unmarked grave, which is a Quaker tradition, and supposedly the two men passed along the location through generations, each telling their firstborn where the body is buried. The Dowingston Republican, which is a newspaper, so the following in their obituary for Puff about how the followers had started a commune. On this occasion, much mischief was done in the community. Men left their wives, and we believe in some instances women their husbands to follow her into the wilderness. One of the requisites for initiation into her church was fasting for forty days, during which time a specific allowance of flower only was allowed to each person, barely sufficient to keep a soul and body together, which in some cases produced delirium. These particulars are gleaned from the wreck of our earliest recollections and may not be in every particular strictly correct. The newspapers like, we might have this wrong, but we think we think it was bad. I mean, I guess that's what I'm doing. I'm saying like, I don't know if this is right. And then that newspaper quotes another newspaper which is unnamed, about Puff's death and again continues to miss gender them. She a few moments previous to her death, placed herself in her chapel and called in her disciples one by one and gave each a solemn admiration. Then raised her hands, closed her eyes, and gave up the ghost. Thus the second Wonder of the Western Country has made her final exit. Much curiosity has been excited since her departure. The roads leading to her mansion were, for a few days after her death literally filled with crowds of people who had been or We're going to see the friend exclamation mark all caps. Her mansion stands on a barren heath, admits the solitudes of the wilderness at some distance from this settlement. I wonder what the first curiosity of the Western Country was, but yeah, they mentioned that they're the second, so that does that does leave one to question. Yeah, if anyone, if anyone knows, tell me not that I right, okay, just actually at me, just your other at that you check more off? Yes, yes, totally and my notifications turned off on I right, Okay. This is a funny joke. It's always funny. Is the person who I'm talking about isn't here, and half the audience might not have any idea what I'm talking about. That's what makes it. That's funny. That's what jokes are based on. That's what you call a L O L. Is that what the us some of the kids say, Sophie, you really tapped into that gen Z TikTok culture there, Sophie. Thanks care so speaking of gen Z in no way at all. The society of Universal Friends. They carry on for a couple of decades longer and slowly start shrinking, and then they die away completely in the middle of the nineteenth century, which which makes sense. Their beliefs outside gender weren't different from anyone else's, and Puff had really been holding it together. A couple of dudes showed up afterwards and claimed have been told by the spirit of Puff to take control. They're like, yeah, like I'm supposed to be in charge now, right, what's up? And sure, sure, buddy, yeah, what have I was stuck around for a couple of years before everyone was like, you're fucking grifter and kicked him out. Um and Puff did right into their will that all the poor members be taken care of forever, so like all the like basically money of the church was put into a trust to take care of the people who couldn't take care of themselves. And even in their will, they tried their hardest to avoid their dead name. The first sentence said that it was the last will and testament of the person called the Universal Friend, who in the year one thousand, seven hundred and seventy six was called Jemima Wilkinson and ever since that time the Universal Friend, and it signed with an X so that they didn't have to write their name out. Wonderful, I know. And people talk about the second like it's this failure because it died out, But I don't think they gave a shit about that. They they recruited enough people for their new town, they set up their new town, and then they lived their lives and then they died, and they succeeded against the world that was like fucking dead set on seeing them destroyed. They survived being driven out of Philly by an angry mob. They survived decades of attempts to have their own townships stolen from them by angry dudes. People tried to get Puff thrown in prison for charges that don't even exist. And whatever life they wanted to lead, they let it. Maybe it was gay, maybe it was ace, maybe a solivate romantic. Maybe the men and women were both just tired of bullshit gender roles have been foisted on them and wind up quiet religious lives. They lived in relative peace for decades doing whatever the funk their thing was. Any verdict Care or Sophie and what their thing was, I mean, yeah, I fe feel I feel like it could be wrong to come down hard one way or another. It's like they were definitely doing their thing. Their thing could be a lot of different things, like aspects of their I mean, obviously they were queer and like the gender sense, but I mean that they definitely tried to create their own thing outside the regular confounds of society that they found restricting. So they're clear in that general sense as well, whether that related to how they intersect with like sexuality. It's challenging because so much of their stuff is around like celibacy, but just who who knows, who knows what that actually means? Yeah, totally, like within within their context, totally. It could have been like a sexual romantic you know, like yeah, like it could be so many things. If I, if I were to put my money on a spot, I would claim that Puff was probably a sexual and um or celibate, whether or not a sexual, but in romantic relationships with some of these people, you know. Yeah, but I don't know. I'm not saying that is what happened. So and they managed two different types of escapes from patriarchy, which are both really cool. One, Puff escaped from the confine of the label of women and took on what in a modern context would be considered a trans not binary identity. But to they in the Society of Universal Friends also dramatically expanded role of women. The women in the group, while still staying within the social category of women. They dressed like men, some of them took men's names, They went unmarried, they preached their own property, all of that, And and I bring this up because these are often presented as opposite goals. You either escape womanhood or you embrace it and expand what's possible within it. But you can just fucking do both, and those are not diametrically opposed. Now those things can go concurrently. Gender is not that it's not a strict set of rules determined by God. Yeah, it turns out it's something that we invent because we're our own gods and we can create gods at will. Yeah. Yeah. One final mystery. A lot of the society's history is buried by time, although we have also a lot of other we I don't I don't have it. Various historical societies have a lot of the history. Um And at one point a descendant sued for a trunk full of papers and then kept or destroyed some of them before returning the rest. And Okay, I like, I like to think that these lost documents are proof about the queer sex. Called it probably worth They're just like burning a whole bunch of like erotic poetry. I'm gonna go with you, Magpie. I agree of the queer sex is fact. And that's the tale of the public universal friend who wound up way more interesting, but also less perfect. And I've been led to believe when I started this research, and which I guess is the truth about basically most people that people heroize way messier, way less perfect, way more interesting. But it's they're always worth considering. I think, no one, I mean, some people should be wholly discounted. But I think the people that we're talking about on this podcast are like, yeah, you shouldn't. Obviously we're like against the idea of a hero. Yeah, but if even if someone has some things that you don't like, like all of the rules for their church, they're still worth considering within the context of what they were actually going against, right, like what what systems they were pushing back on, and how they were trying to deal with questions around like identity and expression and systems of patriarchy. Um, because sometimes it's hard to go from zero to sixty. Yeah, yeah, sorry, So you're ready to start a sect garrison, I've considered it for a while, definitely, Um, I mean I've always wanted to start of secret society. Uh, and I may or may not have started multiple secret societies, but no, always it's it's always it's always interested me as as an idea. One time, I um, I fictionally like literally created a fiction zine about a secret society and distributed it and there was an address that said, if you want to know more about the secret society, contact of following address. And within a year that house burned down. Oh my good, good for you anyway, So I just gotta start. I'm just gonna start doing that and putting the address of my enemies. Sophie, what about you? You're gonna start a sect? And if so, what would the tenants be? I mean, I if I would, I wouldn't tell tell anybody on this podcast. But Garrison, I do have a list of addresses. The earth isn't die, it's being killed. Do the killing of names and addresses? Gay? Do you have any plugables for us? At the end here? Um, let's see. Well, if you want to hear me talk about random parts of queerness and gender on occasion, I will probably do so at certain points on it could happen here at the show that I co write some episodes of, I will be tabling a whole bunch of weird, weird, weird books and and zines at Portland's Red Pride. If you want to learn more about that. You can use the internet, um yeah, and pictures of my new cat on at at Hungry about Tie, Margaret, don't you have a book coming out? Is it available for preorder? Perhaps maybe it might be by the time you listen to this. It's called We Won't Be Here Tomorrow when it comes out from a k presl in September twenty and pre orders may or may not be up, and preorders matter way too much into the weird like algorithmic metric run world that we live in. Just just saying, um yeah. You can follow me on Twitter at Magpie kill Joy. You can follow me on Instagram at Margaret killed Joy. And I have another podcast it's called Live Like the World Is Dying and it's about prepper stuff, I mean, not prepper, a community and individual preparedness and these uncertain times. That was like a legal disclaimer. Yeah for some for some very obvious reason, a lot of people don't love the term prepper. Yeah, prepper has a lot of connotations. But yeah, whatever, Yeah, cool, that is, that is very cool. I'm just I'm just happy to continue the tradition of it's it's not quite plagiarizing zines. I just they're just written by other people. I'll have I'll have at least one zine that I wrote on my table, all right, but most most of them are from other people because I'm too busy writing podcasts. Yeah, it'd be like that sometimes, but I don't know. It's we can more more, more magic gendersts, I think would be being a good direction. Yes, Garrison should write them, and so should you. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media, but more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts up m