>2004 Greetings,
>
>Just got the following query (I'm deleting the '&nbsp's ) from a friend on
>Cape Cod. Think I answered the first part adequately. As to the second
>part, anyone care to speculate on the women and men's shared experience as
>a basis for their actions? I'll pass along any responses to my up-wester
>friend.
>
>David Minor
>
>"I have just finished a (nonfiction) book by James Gilbert entitled Perfect
>Cities: Chicago's Utopias of 1893. In its pages I ran across several
>references to the origins of many of Chicago's 1893 elite as deriving from
>"the Burned-Over District" of upstate New York, including Oneida County,
>Rochester, etc. Apparently this common geographical background engendered a
>cohesion that led to the massive cooperative effort which made possible the
>Chicago World's Fair. As Gilbert puts it: "Besides the uprooting experience
>of moving from upstate New York and Massachusetts to Chicago, this
>generation of embers from the Burned-Over District shared a similar rise to
>leadership In Chicago's business, social and cultural worlds. By 1893 they
>had moved to the forefront of Chicago's new and raw elite: a second
>generation of institution builders and city boosters but a first generation
>of enormous fortunes.
>
>Query: Whence came the name (what got burned over and when)? And if you can
>answer that, tackle this: what in these men's shared experience prompted
>them to rise to such heights?"
>
>David Minor
>Eagles Byte Historical Research
>Pittsford, New York
See Whitney Cross, The Burned Over District, a very important look at
the religious and social culture of central New York.