Newspaper Article from the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Western Star (October 11, 1803)

Originally published in the Raleigh Register, this short account the “great revival of religion” near Knoxville, Tennessee, includes a brief reference to the “jurking” and “convulsion fits” that gripped many participants. The anonymous letter was reprinted in several northern newspapers, including the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Western Star.

RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE

  The following extract of a letter received by a citizen of Gates County, in this state, [N. Car.] from his brother in Tennessee, dated Knox county, Oct. 11, 1803, give an account of some new movements in religion, which we lay before our readers, and on which they will form their own opinions:

“A great revival of religion too place in this neighborhood this summer. It began in a way that I never saw before, and it continues in a very strange way. It began with a jurking and shaking of the body, something like convulsion fits, and this bodily exercise continued with some for three or four months, and that daily. Since that there is a laughing takes place amongst the people, and may be heard for one or two hundred yards. I was at a sacrament a few days past, which held four days, and there was something new to me, though I have heard of it before, which was a dancing amongst many, as perfect a dance as I ever saw after a violin; some danced as long as their strength would last, and I have not a doubt but that they danced with the same spirit that David danced before the Ark. It would be impossible to relate all the exercises of the body that are to be seen; some jumping, some running, some shouting and some in great distress; it is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.” Raleigh Reg.

Source

“Religious Intelligence,” [Stockbridge, Mass.] Western Star, March 24, 1804, [4].

Image courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.