# Talk:Public Universal Friend

Can we add “British America” to the end of the Friend’s birth information. 76.14.124.69 (talk) 18:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Charliehdb (talk) 05:53, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

PUF may have been autistic.  There is a huge known overlap between non-binary identities and autistic people.  Ability to quote huge passages, nontraditional thinking, implicit sensitivity to rough clothing, horse lover, special interest in religion, echolalia, these all point to the possibility of autism.  
There is an entire half-paragraph citing Wisbey and Moyer, who are dedicated to erasing one of PUF's autistic traits, their preference for fine clothes.  
Can someone please take it from here? 173.222.1.191 (talk) 18:39, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

It's not clear what you're requesting. If you have a reliable source that firmly attributes this person's behavior to a diagnosable condition, please mention it here. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:27, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
There are a handful of articles indexed on Google Scholar which mention both the Friend and autism; none of them so far as I can see put forward the suggestion that the Friend should be understood as autistic, or even that their behaviours are characteristic of people with autism. As far as I can tell this is just the IP's original research. One might alternatively argue that the ability to recall long passages was much more widely practiced in periods when literacy and book availability were both much lower than today and so most people didn't have large libraries to hand and were forced to rely on memory; there's no evidence that the Friend was particularly sensitive to rough clothing (even if the supposed preference for fine clothing is true, many people have non-sensory reasons for clothing preferences today and presumably in the past); liking horses is a common trait in people in general and not indicative of autism; the fact that the Friend had an unusual theology is at best weak interest of a special interest in religion in the sense that autistic people use it and non-traditional thinking is hardly indicative of autism in particular. The only trait which is especially indicative of some kind of neurodivergence is echolalia, but even that might be explained by several different causes of which autism is only one, and at any rate our article does not say that the Friend experienced it and again I can find no academic sources which support a diagnosis of echolalia for the Friend.  Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:57, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The following should be edited to reflect the fact that Sarah Friend, not Sarah Richards, is the identity of the individual as they went about living their life in relation to the Public Universal Friend. As such, the references below should be changed from Richards -> Sarah. When your unhappy marriage ends, and historians, which is what we are attempting to be here, continue to use your dead husband's last name to refer to you, it's a sort of historical microaggression of misogynistic "man-washing" of your accomplishments.
"Around 1785, the Friend met Sarah and Abraham Richards. The Richards' unhappy marriage ended in 1786, when Abraham died on a visit to the Friend. Sarah, together with her infant daughter, took up residence with the Friend, adopted a similarly androgynous hairstyle, dress, and mannerisms (as did a few other close female friends), and came to be called Sarah Friend." 
"The Friend entrusted Richards Sarah with holding the society's property in trust, and sent her to preach in one part of the country when the Friend was in another. Richards Sarah had a large part in planning and building the house in which she and the preacher lived in the town of Jerusalem, and when she died in 1793, she left her child to the Friend's care."
This also helps with clarity, as Abraham Richards did exist, but he was not the one the Friend relied upon to do the things described in the preceding paragraph. Leaving it simply as "Richards" allows for possible misunderstanding by those who may cite this article in part rather than in full. Also, we want to use Sarah rather than Richards or Sarah Friend as we do not have the exact dates on when she "came to be called Sarah Friend" without further research, and again out of respect for the person who ultimately became Sarah Friend, she appears to have gone by Sarah the entire time. Cyrusmagnusx (talk) 04:37, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

In the Early Life section there appears to be a significant typo that needs immediate correction. ~2025-35528-60 (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

or perhaps the typo is the name Jeremiah? or the explanation for the two different references is not given for context? ~2025-35528-60 (talk) 17:59, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
Where are you seeing a typo? The child was named Jemima, the child's father was named Jeremiah. Belbury (talk) 18:03, 22 November 2025 (UTC)