“The jerks were by far the most violent and shocking I had ever seen. The heads of the jerking patients flew, with wonderous quickness, from side to side, in various directions, and their necks doubled like a flail in the hands of a thresher….”
“Am I an opposer of a revival of religion, when I say the jirks, dancing &c. are not God’s instituted means of Grace, nor Scriptural evidences of true religion? and that when they are voluntary, they are a corruption of God’s worship?”
“In the evening most of the believers met [for] the first time publicly in this place…. A. Dunlavy who had never before been exercised, was taken with shaking & Jerking from that to dancing, which continued for 4 hours with scarce any intermission.”
“[O]ne of the [Shaker] Sisters looked sternly and solemnly at him when all of a sudden he was taken with the jirks and was jirked around the house and thro’ the brush and bushes and would at times be thrown…completely heels over head, flat on his back, and the [hickory] staff which he held in his hand would be thrown 20 or 30 feet from him….”
“[Robert Pearce] Lived about 79 years; came to believers when about 40 years old, rec’d Faith through one Mikel Dodd; who told him that he was jerked about like a circus actor….”
