This excerpt, likely derived from the journals (now lost) of Benjamin Seth Youngs, was copied into the official records of South Union Shaker Village by Harvey L. Eads later in the nineteenth century. In 1805, Youngs had witnessed a number of western converts who contracted the jerks after refusing to participate in the Shakers’ distinctive dancing worship practices (click here). John Patterson, an Ohio believer, informed Youngs of a similar incident involving a Kentucky man named John Bryant. Several months later, Bryant moved his family to the Shaker settlement at Shawnee Run (later Pleasant Hill), Kentucky, where he assumed a series of leadership positions prior to his death in 1823.
Source
Harvey L. Eads, transcr., Shakers—South Union, Ky., “Record Book A (including Autobiography of John Rankin, Sr.),” 1805–1836, 110, Shakers of South Union, Kentucky, Collection, 1800–1916, MSS 597, Manuscripts and Folklife Archives, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.
