Excerpt from The Biography of Elder David Purviance (ca. 1804)
“But the bodily exercise (as it was called) seemed to change its manner of operation. The falling exercise became not so common, and the jerks succeeded….”
Excerpt from David Spinning’s “Short Sketch” (ca. 1804)
“[T]o return to my narrative of the Revival, it now went on with a great increase of numbers, & extended far and wide. The falling exercise continued; also much severe jirking. There were many now converts added….”
Excerpt from the Biography of Eld. Barton W. Stone (ca. 1804)
“The jerks cannot be so easily described…. When the whole system was affected, I have seen the person stand in one place, and jerk backward and forward in quick succession, their head nearly touching the floor behind and before…..”
Excerpt from James B. Finley’s “Sketch of the Rev. David Young” (Summer 1804)
“In this year [1804] that strange disorder ‘the jerks’ overran all Western Tennessee. It attacked the righteous and the wicked—an involuntary muscular exercise, which drew the subjects affected backward and forward with a force and quickness perhaps previously unknown to the human family….”
Letter from John Meacham, Issachar Bates, and Benjamin Seth Youngs to the Shaker Ministry (January 31, 1805)
“I took the Jerks, & was the first person that had it in these parts. Sometimes I have had it in meditating on serious things when alone, sometimes by seeing the situation of the wicked, sometimes by reading, or hearing some striking expressions, sometimes in going about my common employment, & sometimes while in bed….”
