Newspaper Article from the Hudson, New York, Bee (November 6, 1804)
“It is asserted in some prints, that these assemblies have originated a disorder called the Jerks….”
Felix Roberton’s Essay on Chorea Sancti Viti (June 5, 1805)
“I suppose there are but few individuals in the United States, who have not at least heard of the unparalleled blaze of enthusiastic religion which burst forth in the western country about the year 1800…. It was under these circumstances that some found themselves unable by voluntary efforts to suppress the contraction of their muscles….”
William Young’s “Thoughts on the Exercises” (February 20, 1806)
“I presume not to condemn the persons thus influenced [by the jerks], nor to detract from the sincerity of their devotion; but my wish is to remove the delusion of supposing it to be a bodily disease, and leave the intrinsic merits of the subject to Him, who “searcheth the hearts and trieth the reins of the children of men….”
Excerpts from the Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley (ca. 1808)
“These strange exercises that have excited so much wonder in the western country came in toward the last of the revival, and were, in the estimation of some of the more pious, the chaff of the work. Now it was that the humiliating and often disgusting exercises of dancing, laughing, jerking, barking like dogs, or howling like wolves, and rolling on the ground, manifested themselves….”
Excerpt from David Rice’s Second Epistle to the Citizens of Kentucky (1808)
“We ought, however, to have remembered that bodily convulsions, the jirks, &c. are never mentioned in scripture, as evidences of a graceless state, or a delusion of the devil; nor yet as evidences of a work of God’s grace. In a religious view, we ought to have thought but little of them….”
