Although terse, the brief notations on the jerks in the journal of Knoxville shopkeeper Richard Green Waterhouse help to establish a timeline for the emergence of the bodily exercises in east Tennessee. In addition, Waterhouse’s December 1804 entry reveals how the “strange and unknown Nervous Affection” developed its own name: “the Jerks.”
JUNE A.D. 1804.
A strange and unknown Nervous Affection, or Disease, made its appearance, in a variety of forms, in different parts of the Counties of Knox and Blount. Prevailing most at Public Religious collections, much excited by singing, preaching, and praying—hence, few of the weak and ignorant who attended the Camp Meetings and other Religious Assemblies, escaped this sympathetic contagion, they being the principal objects of its virulence. Those afflicted, were attacked precipitately, with involuntary motions, distortions, slight alienations of the Mind, consternation, and vociferation. Hence, the Disease was termed; “the Jerks, or Exercise.”
JULY
Camp Meetings very frequent. Numbers afflicted with the “Jerks, or Exercise,” with great pretentions to Religion. Wrote to my brother, John Waterhouse, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania….
DECEMBER.
The frequency of Camp Meetings much abated, and the “Jerks, or Exercise” less prevalent. Continued my courtship with Miss Tipton. Sold to Robert McBath, an Indian Horse, bought of Red Bird, for $40.00. To be discharged in Whiskey, at 50 cents per gallon. Laid in a large stock of Liquors. Removed an old log house from back lot in Iredell, to a vacant lot on the River, at the Flat Landing. All the Property of James Charter. Bought of Peter Houston, for $33.00, a small bay Mare, which died in 5 or 6 days thereafter. Now, speaking of myself, and very much to my discredit, I still continued intemperate, lewd, and depraved. Regardless of the Admonitions of my most valuable and sincere Friends, in whose estimation, I was (very much to my disadvantage), continually depreciating. Oh the direful, Hell-suffering pangs of these sensations! R. G. W.
Source
Richard Green Waterhouse, journals, 1795–1897, typescript, 151–153, box 1, MS 918, Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
