The Public Universal Friend (born Jemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) was an American preacher born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Quaker parents. After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and all pronouns. In androgynous clothes, the Friend preached throughout the northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.

The Friend's theology was broadly similar to that of most Quakers. The Friend stressed free will, opposed slavery, and supported sexual abstinence. The most committed members of the Society of Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households and community. In the 1790s, members of the Society acquired land in Western New York where they formed the town of Jerusalem near Penn Yan, New York. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist by the 1860s. Some writers have portrayed the Friend as a woman, and either a manipulative fraudster, or a pioneer for women's rights, while others, such as scholar Scott Larson, have viewed the Friend as transgender or non-binary and a figure in trans history.

References to the Friend tend to avoid any pronouns altogether, instead using "the Friend".

Jemima Wilkinson, who would later become the Public Universal Friend, was born on November 29, 1752, in Cumberland, Rhode Island, as the eighth child of Amy (or Amey, née Whipple) and Jeremiah Wilkinson, becoming the fourth generation of the family to live in America. The child was named after Jemima, one of the biblical Job's daughters. Wilkinson's great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was an officer in the army of Charles I who had emigrated from England around 1650 and was active in colonial government. Jeremiah Wilkinson was a cousin of Stephen Hopkins, the colony's longtime governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Jeremiah attended traditional worship with the Society of Friends (the Quakers) at the Smithfield Meeting House. Early biographer David Hudson says that Amy was also a member of the Society for many years, while later biographer Herbert Wisbey finds no evidence of that, but quotes Moses Brown as saying the child was "born such" because of Jeremiah's affiliation. Amy died when Wilkinson was 12 or 13 in 1764, shortly after giving birth to a twelfth child.

Wilkinson had fine black hair and eyes, and from an early age was strong and athletic, becoming an adept equestrian as a child, remaining so in adulthood, and liking spirited horses and ensuring that animals received good care. An avid reader, Wilkinson could quote long passages of the Bible and prominent Quaker texts from memory. Little else is reliably known about Wilkinson's childhood; some early accounts such as Hudson's describe Wilkinson as being fond of fine clothes and averse to labor, but there is no contemporaneous evidence of this and Wisbey considers it doubtful. Biographer Paul Moyer says it may have been invented to fit a then-common narrative that people who experienced dramatic religious awakenings were formerly profligate sinners.

In the mid-1770s, Wilkinson began attending meetings in Cumberland with New Light Baptists who had formed as part of the Great Awakening and emphasized individual enlightenment, and stopped attending meetings of the Society of Friends – being disciplined for that in February 1776 and disowned by the Smithfield Meeting in August. Wilkinson's sister Patience was dismissed at the same time for having an illegitimate child; brothers Stephen and Jeptha had been dismissed by the pacifistic Society in May 1776 for training for military service. Amid these family disturbances and the broader ones of the American Revolutionary War, dissatisfied with the New Light Baptists and shunned by mainstream Quakers, Wilkinson faced much stress in 1776.

In October 1776, Wilkinson contracted an epidemic disease, most likely typhus, and was bedridden and near death with a high fever. The future preacher's family summoned a doctor from Attleboro, six miles away, and neighbors kept up a death-watch at night. The fever broke after several days. The Friend later reported that Wilkinson had died, receiving revelations from God through two archangels who proclaimed there was "Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone". Accounts by the doctor and other witnesses state that the illness was real, but none of them say that Wilkinson died. The Friend further said that Wilkinson's soul had ascended to heaven and the body had been reanimated with a new spirit charged by God with preaching his word, that of the "Publick Universal Friend", describing that name in the words of Isaiah 62:2 as "a new name which the mouth of the Lord hath named". The name referenced the designation the Society of Friends used for members who traveled from community to community to preach, "Public Friends".

From that time on, the Friend refused to answer to "Jemima Wilkinson", ignoring or chastising those who insisted on using it. Hudson says that when visitors asked if it was the name of the person they were addressing, the Friend simply quoted Luke 23:3 ("thou sayest it"). Identifying as neither male nor female, the Friend asked not to be referred to with gendered pronouns. Followers respected these wishes; they referred only to "the Public Universal Friend" or short forms such as "the Friend" or "P.U.F.", and many avoided gender-specific pronouns even in private diaries, while others used he. When someone asked if the Friend was male or female, the preacher replied "I am that I am", saying the same thing to a man who criticized the Friend's manner of dress (adding, in the latter case, "there is nothing indecent or improper in my dress or appearance; I am not accountable to mortals").