“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….”
“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.”
“We have now got the Silent, the jirking, the laughing, and the dancing also the [runing] & pointing exercises. Each one of these in their turns have staggered serious people but they are still as it were constrained to acknowledge this O Lord is thy work, and it is wondrous in our eyes….”
“[W]e Are exercised in A religious way we think. This is the Genus As general name for the thing; but there Are A great many specimens of this exercise. There is the jerking; this is the most Common. In addition to this, there is the dancing, Laughing, running, walking, pointing, fighting and falling exercise….”
“I am told… [they] have [another] intire, new, and abominable exercise, which consists, in a large number of them collecting, and breaking wind behind, with all their might….”
