Long after his circuit riding days were over, Methodist minister Joseph Tarkington of Indiana published an autobiography in which he recalled witnessing the jerks as a boy growing up in middle Tennessee. Click here for the full text of the Autobiography of Joseph Tarkington (1899).
THE JERKS.
In those times the exercise of religion was very vigorous. I have seen the women shouting, and, in bending backwards, their hair would stream down, touching the floor. It seemed that they would break their backs. Some would have the jerks. No two men could hold them still. The holders would be thrown down. The best way to treat them was to get out of their way when they had the jerks, and only see that they did not hurt themselves. There is something in the jerks unexplainable. I asked Mrs. John Givens, who at times had them, to explain what they were. She said that, when she felt like shouting praises to God, if she did it willingly, she did not have them; but when she resisted shouting, which she said she had done until the blood ran out of her nose, then the jerks came, and were very hard with her. She was a pure, good woman, a Presbyterian, and a great help to young Christians.
Source
Autobiography of Joseph Tarkington, One of the Pioneer Methodist Preachers of Indiana (Cincinnati, Ohio: Curts and Jennings, 1899), 72–73.
