Presbyterian clergyman John Lyle first witnessed the jerking exercise while traveling on a mission tour of southside Kentucky and middle Tennessee in 1805 (click here). As this religious magazine report indicates, he confronted renewed outbreaks of the bodily exercises among zealous Presbyterians more than a decade later.
DOMESTIC MISSIONS.—No. IV.
Abstract of the First Report of the Board of Missions to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church.—May, 1817.
The Rev. John Lyle has performed his mission of three months in the region assigned. He itinerated in Bath, Fleming, Mason, Nicholas, and some other counties in Kentucky. His audiences were generally attentive, and sometimes considerably impressed. In one place where he preached to about 80 or 100, who were unusually solemn, and some much affected, he witnessed a recurrence of one species of that strange bodily exercise once so common in Kentucky. Two women had the jerks. Mr. Lyle travelled 600 miles, preaching 62 sermons, and delivered 10 shorter addresses.
Source
“Domestic Missions, No. IV,” Religious Remembrancer, 4th ser., 49 (August 2, 1817): 193.
Image courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
