2004 Greetings,
Just got the following query (I'm deleting the ' '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
585 264-0423
'dminor' 'at symbol' 'eznet.net'
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