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. She soon betook herself to solitude and study of the Bible, and seemed in deep reflection, and at last kept wholly to her room, and then went to bed. She was at that time but eighteen years old, and it scarcely seems possible that she deliberately planned out her system of life-long deception which proved so successful; but soon she began to see visions, which she described to her sisters and visitors, and interpreted to them. Finally she fell in a deep trance, which lasted thirty-six hours, during which she scarcely breathed. About the middle of the second day, when surrounded by anxious watchers (who proved valuable witnesses in her later career), she rose up majestically, called for clothing, dressed herself, and walked about fully restored and calm, though pale. But she announced that Jemima Wilkinson had died, and that her body was now inhabited by a spirit whose mission was to deliver the oracles of God to mankind, and who was to be known henceforth by the name of the Universal Friend. It ought to be noted here that this girl of eighteen not only maintained these absurd claims of resurrection of the body and reincarnation, at that time, in the face of the expostulation and arguments of her relatives and friends, but also with unshaken firmness, and before all hearers, till the day of her death at the age of sixty-one. On the first Sunday after her trance, the Universal Friend preached in the open air near her home to a large and excited gathering of people; and she electrified her audience by her eloquence, her brilliant imagination, her extraordinary familiarity with the Scriptures, and her facility and force of application and quotation from them. Her success in obtaining converts was most marked from the first, as was her success in obtaining temporal comforts and benefits from these converts. In this she resembled the English religious adventuress, Johanna Southcote. For six years she lived at the house of Judge William Potter, in South Kingstown, R. I. This handsome house was known as the Abbey. He enlarged it by building a splendid suite of rooms for his beloved spiritual leader, on whom he lavished his large fortune.