“Many extravagances prevailed during the intervals of the preaching, particularly among the Females: called here jerking, it appears to be similar to hysteric affection. Several were so much exhausted by these exertions as to fall to the ground apparently lifeless & were conveyed to the shade by the bystanders.”
“The peopel had the Jirks Shouting and d[a]ncing and…those that atempted to desribe there fealing while ingaged in the above exersize sayed the[y] had the most hevenly fealing that [they] ever felt in the there life….”
“For better than four months past, our meetings have been very powerful…mighty stompings & roarings against the flesh—violent jerking, rolling, & tumbling on the floor….”
“The duration of this epidemic was much shorter than that of most of those in Europe. In a little more than a twelve-month, it had almost entirely disappeared…. It was to the scenes enacted at this time, we believe, that the epithet ‘Jerks’ was first applied.”
“[O]ccasionally I attended [revival meetings in 1817], & witnessed the disorders of Jerking, dancing, swooning….”
“In those remarkable bodily affections, called the jerks, which appeared in religious meetings some years ago, the nervous irregularity was commonly produced by the sight of other persons thus affected; and if in some instances without the sight, yet by having the imagination strongly impressed by hearing of such things….”
