The Burned-Over District was a popular nineteenth century term for western New York State, a region unusually prone to religious enthusiasm and innovation. The name, first used by evangelical preacher Charles Grandison Finney, derived from the fact that the area had been repeatedly swept by the "flames" of religious revival. Revivals occurred in 1799-1800, 1807-1808, and 1818-1819 and reached a peak between 1825 and 1837 as people flocked to the area for jobs created by the newly opened Erie .Canal. Many of these people were converted in the.'great Rochester revivals of 1830-1831, otKefsftSy the.Methodist itinerants*who circled'the.fiifal'irjeas holdingfrequent camp meetings. Novel religious movements also found an open door in weatern New York. Several Utopian commuities that had been persecuted elsewhere settled there, including John Humphrey Noyes's Oneida Community and Anne Jemima Wilkinson's "New Jerusalem." Adventist preacher William Miller, whodeclared that Christ would return in 1843, lived...