“The news of our Country thro’ last season no doubt you have heard. I mean that concerning Religion. The meetings concerning this have been great. The Subjects affected in a very extraordinary manner. They fall down some as in swoning fits be quite motionless. Others are affected when they fall as if in a convulsive fit….”
“I was lately informed by a neighbour of mine, just returned from the Miami country, where Mr. McNamaar is now settled (he lately moved from Kentucke) that at such meetings there, they who fall down are strongly convulsed, and so violently agitated, that it will require two or three to hold one of them….”
“While we resided in Fayette County, I think in 1802, there was a very great Religious excitement among the Baptists and Presbyterians, in that part of Pennsylvania…. The Jerks was a prevailing exercise throughout the whole of this excitement….”
“While many within the bounds of those [southern and western] Presbyteries have been, as is hoped, effectually called…, there have been multitudes of instances in which great bodily agitations, and other circumstances out of the usual course of religious exercise, have attended the work….”
“On the first Sabbath, the day after my arrival, soon after I began to speak the [cries] agonies and distress of the convicted drew my attention. Their bodies had all the appearance of convulsions….”
“A great revival of religion took 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.”
