Letter from George Addison Baxter to Archibald Alexander (April 25, 1833)
“[T]he bodily exercise, and the disorders to which it gave rise were of unspeakable injury to the church in that day….”
“History of the ‘Jirks’” in the New York Telescope (February 18, 1826)
“I have frequently thought that a history of the singular exercises, called the “Jirks,” and other strange operations which affected the subjects of the great Kentucky Revival, would be interesting to my readers….”
James J. McDaniel’s Reminiscences of Joseph Brown and the Jerks (ca. 1823)
“About 1822–3…, I attended a camp-meeting at McCain’s…. [T]here I first saw [Joseph Brown] under religious excitement…. Some years before, those peculiar, involuntary and spasmodic exercises known as ‘jerks,’ had been very common…and [they] continued to effect Col. Brown likely through life….”
Published Letter in the Methodist Magazine (October 15, 1820)
“The character of this revival is the least mixed with what is called irregularities or extravangancies of any that I ever saw. We have had nothing of what is called the jirks or dance among us….”
Excerpt from the Religious Remembrancer (August 2, 1817)
“The Rev. John Lyle…witnessed a recurrence of one species of that strange bodily exercise once so common in Kentucky….”
Newspaper Report from the New-London [Connecticut] Daily Chronicle (Fall 1860–Winter 1862)
“The “jerks” were introduced during a protracted meeting in the township of Chelsea, in that county, in the fall of 1860….”
