Dockside Revelations

How Floating Libraries Empowered 19th-Century Prophets

In the early 19th century, western New York’s Erie Canal (completed in 1825) not only moved goods but also accelerated the spread of ideas. The once-remote “frontier” was flooded with printed material thanks to improved transportation and cheap printing. One striking example was the “Book Boat,” a floating library/bookstore that traveled the canal from Albany to Buffalo between about 1830 and 1850 (fee.org). This boat would dock in canal towns and rent or sell books for a few cents, making literature accessible to farm families and villagers who had never had a library before. In fact, the publishing firm H. & E. Phinney of Cooperstown pioneered these floating bookstores, using canal boats and wagons to distribute thousands of books (their own and other publishers’) throughout upstate New York (wiki.org). For the first time, frontier communities along the canal could readily obtain Bibles, novels, histories, magazines, and even technical or occult works. The Erie Canal thus acted like a 19th-century information superhighway – or “Wikipedia on water” – circulating knowledge that would ignite religious and intellectual ferment in the region.

Self-Made Prophets in the Burned-Over District

The term “Burned-Over District” refers to the region of upstate New York swept by so many revival fires that by the 1830s there seemed to be no “fuel” (unconverted souls) left. In this charged environment of freewheeling religious competition, a remarkable number of charismatic laypeople (with little formal training) rose to prominence as prophets, preachers, and sect founders. Social fluidity, religious liberty, and the flood of new information all played a role in enabling these figures. Traditional authority held less sway on this frontier – what mattered was a persuasive message that spoke to common folk’s needsburnedoverdistrict.org. If one preacher didn’t satisfy, another would arise next door; much like an open marketplace, this competition spurred innovation in doctrine and practiceburnedoverdistrict.org. The result was an explosion of new movements led by “self-made” visionaries – men and women who often started with nothing but an idea (gleaned from the Bible or a book they’d read) and won a following through passionate preaching and print. As one study observes, “almost all the radical innovators were laypersons with little or no theological training – William Miller, Joseph Smith, Mother Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, et al.,” made possible by an American religious culture open to charismatic outsidersburnedoverdistrict.org.

Below, we profile some of the most influential of these Burned-Over District figures – prophets, prophetesses, preachers (and a few frauds) – and highlight how the era’s newfound access to information helped spark their rise.

Joseph Smith and the Birth of Mormonism

 Smith grew up in a canal town at a time when “the region had been scorched by one revival after another” and churches competed fiercely for converts. By his own account, the teenaged Joseph was bewildered by the “war of words and tumult of opinions” among Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists – each insisting it alone had the truth. In 1823, Joseph reported an angelic visitation directing him to buried gold plates, and by 1830 (at just 24 years old) he published the Book of Mormon as a new scripture. This book, which Smith said he translated “by the gift and power of God,” purported to tell the ancient history of America’s indigenous peoples as a lost branch of the House of Israel. Uniquely, Smith claimed the record was inscribed in “reformed Egyptian” characters – an unknown language he alone could decipher with divine aid (wiki.org). The Book of Mormon itself explains that “the characters…called among us the reformed Egyptian” had been handed down and altered over centuries (wiki.org).

To followers, such details lent an air of mystery and erudition to Smith’s revelations. Critics, however, later noted that many ideas in the Book of Mormon echoed books available in upstate New York at the time. For example, in 1823 a Vermont pastor, Ethan Smith (no relation), published View of the Hebrews – a work arguing that Native Americans descended from the lost tribes of Israel (wiki.org). This and other speculative histories of the Mound Builders could well have circulated through local libraries or the canal’s book boats, planting seeds that Joseph Smith wove into his own narrative. Whatever its sources, Smith’s message cut through the cacophony of rival sects by declaring all existing churches apostate and announcing a restored gospel for the latter days

Here was a bold new authority above debate, buttressed by a tangible book. Within months of publishing it, Smith gathered a band of believers and founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) in 1830. Despite fierce opposition (established clergy denounced him as a fraud and mobs drove the Mormons out of New York within a few years), the movement kept growing. Notably, the early Mormons made aggressive use of the printing press: they printed missionary tracts and later a newspaper to spread Smith’s continuing “revelations.” In short, Joseph Smith leveraged both newfound information and new scripture to become a prophet-entrepreneur, producing a faith that appealed to those “hungering for a clear, prophetic message in an age of uncertainty”. His story exemplified the Burned-Over District dynamic: an ordinary young man, armed with a Bible, some provocative ideas (and perhaps a few obscure books), could write himself into history as a modern prophet.

William Miller and the Millerites’ Prophetic Calculations

Another influential figure was William Miller, a Baptist farmer from Low Hampton, NY – described as a self-taught Bible enthusiast with no formal theology background. In the 1820s–30s, after voraciously studying biblical prophecies (especially the books of Daniel and Revelation), Miller became convinced he had unlocked a great secret: the exact timing of Christ’s Second Coming. By his calculations, Jesus was due to return around 1843–1844. Miller began preaching this message in the 1830s, and it struck a nerve. Hundreds of ministers and tens of thousands of laypeople across the Burned-Over District (and beyond) embraced his prediction, forming a movement known as the Millerites. Miller’s followers – many of them ordinary farmers, artisans, and young laborers – felt they had discovered a unique truth that mainstream churches had overlooked. They eagerly spread the word. Millerite preachers held enthusiastic camp meetings to warn the masses, and enormous prophetic charts were unfurled in meeting halls decoding Daniel’s 2300-day prophecy into specific years. Crucially, Miller’s ideas rode the new print networks: by the early 1840s a whole “Adventist” press arose to publish Miller’s lectures, charts, and a popular periodical, Signs of the Times. “Cheap pamphlets and frequent news reports” ensured that Miller’s prophecies reached nearly every village in upstate New York. In the months leading up to the predicted end-date (October 22, 1844), excitement peaked – but also drew hostile scrutiny. Many traditional clergymen condemned Miller’s date-setting as fanaticism; some churches even expelled members who openly followed Miller. When October 22, 1844 came and went with no Second Coming, believers were left in shock and despair – a fiasco remembered as the Great Disappointment. Most drifted away disillusioned. Yet even in failure, the Millerite movement sowed seeds for new religions. A core of devotees refused to give up, searching the Bible (and Miller’s library of charts) for why they’d been “wrong.” In time, they concluded the date had been right but the event misinterpreted – an invisible heavenly judgment began in 1844, rather than Christ’s visible return. This interpretation, combined with fresh ideas (like seventh-day Sabbath observance, gleaned from Bible study aids), coalesced into the Seventh-day Adventist Church over the next two decades. In that sense Miller’s legacy – and his use of printed prophecy resources – directly paved the way for another major prophet of the Burned-Over District: Ellen G. White.

Ellen G. White: Prophetess of Adventist Revival

Amid the wreckage of Miller’s failed prediction, a 17-year-old girl from Portland, Maine (who was in upstate New York with other Millerites) stepped into the void. Ellen Harmon (later Ellen G. White) experienced her first vision in December 1844, just weeks after the Great Disappointment. In that vision – occurring during a prayer meeting – she saw a symbolic journey of believers toward Heaven, which reassured the dispirited Millerites that God was still leading them. Over the next year, Ellen reported multiple heavenly visions that explained the 1844 prophecy (e.g. Christ’s work had shifted to a heavenly phase, not an earthly coming) and urged the faithful to regroup. Though barely out of her teens, Ellen spoke with a conviction that galvanized those around her. Her rise to prominence is a remarkable example of how a 19th-century woman could attain spiritual authority by invoking divine inspiration. Naturally timid and of limited education, she felt overawed addressing older male preachers – yet when she related a vision, listeners were moved to tears and shouts, convinced God had spoken through this humble girlburnedoverdistrict.org. Adventist meetings began inviting “Sister Ellen” to share her revelations. By the 1850s, Ellen (now married to James White, a Millerite minister) became the acknowledged prophetess of the growing Sabbatarian Adventist movement. Over the next 70 years, Ellen G. White’s influence would eclipse that of any other Burned-Over prophet. She ultimately wrote some 100,000 pages of counsel – including dozens of books on theology, biblical prophecy, education, and health. Her guidance (all presented as messages shown her by God in vision) shaped the doctrines and lifestyle of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, formally organized in 1863. Notably, White never held an official clerical title and was one of the only women of her era to effectively lead a religious denomination without ordination. Her authority rested entirely on the community’s acceptance of her visions as genuine prophecy.

Yet Ellen White was also a product of her information-rich age. She and her husband established a publishing house and a church paper (The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald) to disseminate her teachings widely. Many of the practical reforms she championed – such as vegetarianism, temperance, hydropathy (water cures), and the importance of fresh air and sanitation – were already being promoted by contemporary health reformers, even before she “saw” them in vision (perspectivedigest.org). For example, in 1864 Mrs. White wrote that indulgence in meat could fill one’s blood with “scrofulous and cancerous humors,” corrupting the body (atsjats.orgatsjats.org). This wording reflected the old humoral theory of medicine (dating back to Hippocrates and Galen) which held that four bodily humors – blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile – must be in balance for health (atsjats.org). By Ellen White’s day, humoral ideas were gradually giving way to modern germ theory, but they still appeared in popular health literature. It is likely that publications on home remedies and physiology (which the young Adventist prophetess could have accessed through friends, libraries, or even a canal boat library) informed some of her “divine” health counsels. In fact, she herself encouraged people to study health and science and to read widely; Adventists became known for operating “tract societies” and lending libraries. White’s case shows how a female revival leader combined personal charisma with print culture – she often cited what God “had shown” her, but then published those revelations as books for all to study. Thanks to her prolific pen and the Adventists’ energetic publishing work, Ellen G. White’s influence spread far beyond New York, and indeed today her writings have been translated into over 100 languages. She stands out as perhaps the most institutionally impactful of the Burned-Over prophets, proving that a woman with a pen (and a printing press) could transform a religious community.

Female “Prophetesses” and Radical Reformers

The Second Great Awakening opened new avenues for women in religious life, and the Burned-Over District produced several female prophets and preachers who defied the norms of their day. In an era when most churches barred women from the pulpit, these women found ways to lead – often by claiming direct inspiration from God, which no man could legitimately counter. We have already seen Ellen White’s prominence. Decades earlier, “Mother” Ann Lee and Jemima Wilkinson paved the way for women’s religious leadership:

• Ann Lee (1736–1784) – founder of the Shakers: Ann Lee was an illiterate English factory worker turned visionary who emigrated to upstate New York in 1774 with a small band of followers. Called the Shaking Quakers (for their ecstatic worship), Lee’s sect practiced celibacy, communal ownership, simple living, and wild spirit-filled dance meetings. Mother Ann taught that God was dual male-female and that she herself embodied the female aspect of Christ, returning in the Last Days. This radical theology – effectively placing a woman in the role of Messiah – was shocking to contemporaries. Yet the Shakers attracted converts in the Burned-Over District, especially around the 1820s when curiosity about utopian communities ran high. The Shakers’ reputation for strange practices (like trembling, speaking in tongues, and men and women leading together) made them a controversial but notable presence. Importantly, the Shakers documented their visions and rules in print. They published hymns, testimonies, and later periodicals, which helped spread their message beyond those who visited their communes. Ann Lee herself left no writings, but her disciples compiled her sayings and reported visions in books that circulated. In a sense, Shakerism grew in the shadows of the Erie Canal’s expansion – several communities (e.g. near Albany and near Rochester) were located not far from the canal, enabling easier travel and exchange of letters and publications. By embracing female leadership and print, Ann Lee’s movement prefigured later female-led sects and underscored how access to the “new knowledge” pipeline could legitimize even the most unorthodox ideas. Outsiders might scoff at Shaker celibacy or communal dancing, but the sect appealed to seekers “dissatisfied with mainstream churches’ worldliness,” offering a disciplined, archive-ablevision of restored apostolic life.
• Jemima Wilkinson (1752–1819) – the Public Universal Friend: Another early prophetess, Wilkinson was a Rhode Island Quaker who, during a severe illness in 1776, claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless spirit commissioned by God. Thereafter, she refused her birth name, spoke as “the Friend”, and preached throughout Rhode Island and Pennsylvania that the end times were near. In the 1790s, Jemima Wilkinson led a group of followers to settle in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where they founded a communal village called Jerusalem (in Yates County). She taught pacifism, plain dress, and celibacy or marital chastity, and was revered by her disciples as a latter-day oracle. What’s notable is that Wilkinson – a woman acting and dressing in a quasi-male prophetic role – sustained a following for decades, circulating her sermons and teachings via manuscript and word of mouth. By the time of her death in 1819, her community had dwindled, and unlike the Shakers, the Friend’s followers left little lasting organization. But contemporaries in upstate NY certainly knew of her. In later historical hindsight, Jemima Wilkinson is often counted among the Burned-Over District’s religious innovatorsburnedoverdistrict.org. Her presence in western New York (overlappping the early canal years) added to the sense that “new prophets” could arise even from society’s margins. It’s tempting to imagine that had the Erie Canal’s book boat come along a bit earlier, Wilkinson’s community might have eagerly read the same religious texts that inspired others – she was from a Quaker background, so she already drew on the Bible and Quaker writings. Though lacking a printing press of her own, the Friend demonstrates that the ethos of personal revelation was already taking root among frontier women. Her legacy may even have influenced later female mystics in the area.
• The Fox Sisters (Kate and Maggie Fox) – founders of Spiritualism: Not all the Burned-Over District’s prophets operated within Christian tradition. In 1848, in the little hamlet of Hydesville, NY, Margaret “Maggie” Fox (14) and Kate Fox (11) launched what became Modern Spiritualism, a movement centered on communicating with the spirits of the dead. It began with mysterious nightly rapping sounds in their farmhouse, which the girls claimed were answers from a ghost haunting the house. Local curiosity flared into religious interpretation: neighbors packed the Fox home to witness “intelligent” knocks answering yes/no questions, and many believed a spirit truly spoke. News of the “Hydesville rappings” spread quickly to nearby towns – notably Rochester, a boomtown on the Erie Canal. The Rochester Daily Democrat published an article titled “Mysterious Noises,” describing the phenomena in detail. In effect, media coverage turned a local mystery into an international movement. With guidance from their savvy older sister Leah, the Fox sisters went on tour. In November 1849, they hosted the first public séance in Rochester’s Corinthian Hall, astounding audiences as unseen “spirits” answered questions with knocks. Within just a few years, Spiritualism caught fire across America: by the early 1850s, spirit-mediums were practicing in many cities, séances became a popular parlor pastime, and new Spiritualist newspapers sprang up to exchange ghostly messages and philosophies. The Burned-Over District proved the perfect incubator for Spiritualism because its people were already primed to accept visions, miracles, and direct supernatural experiences. The same region that produced Mormonism and Millerism – with their prophecy charts, angelic visitations, and end-times urgency – was open to the idea that ordinary persons could commune with invisible realms. Tellingly, many Spiritualist leaders were women, since mediumship gave women a rare public voice and authority. The Fox sisters themselves became celebrated teenage celebrities. As one historian notes, Spiritualism’s elevation of personal spirit experience was a logical extension of the Second Great Awakening’s stress on individual revelation – but now completely unmoored from biblical orthodoxy. Of course, with fame came skepticism. Detractors accused the Fox sisters of fraud from the outset, suspecting the girls produced the raps themselves. Decades later, in 1888 (amid personal and financial troubles), Maggie Fox publicly confessed that the spirit knocks had indeed been a hoax – she demonstrated how she could crack her toe joints to produce a sharp rap sound, duping observers. This sensational confession (printed in newspapers worldwide) seemed to debunk Spiritualism, though Maggie recanted her statement a year later, perhaps under pressure. Regardless, the damage was done to the sisters’ reputations – one newspaper snidely called it “the death rattle of the Rochester rappings.” Both Fox sisters died in poverty within a few years. Yet Spiritualism survived their downfall; by then it had a life of its own, with thousands of adherents (including notable figures like newspaper editor Horace Greeley and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln). The Fox sisters illustrate the twin sides of the Burned-Over phenomena: sincere seekers of truth and experience on one hand, and shrewd opportunists (or outright fakes) on the other. Their movement, born of a mix of genuine belief, theatrical showmanship, and print publicity, shows how the new informational currents could be used to enthrall and exploit the public. Spiritualist mediums would later compile vast volumes of “spirit communications,” often borrowing language from occult literature and Transcendentalist philosophy – content they could have accessed thanks to the era’s print boom. In sum, the Fox sisters rode the wave of mass media and public curiosity to create an entirely new form of religious expression, one that mirrored the Burned-Over District’s experimental, anti-establishment spirit (quite literally, in their case).

Information as Inspiration: The Book Boat’s Legacy

Why did so many new religious movements emerge in one region, almost all at once? Historians point to several causes – social upheaval, lack of an established church, charismatic personalities – but underpinning these was the sudden availability of information in the early 1800s. The Erie Canal had physically opened up western New York, bringing migrants and trade, but also ideas and books in unprecedented volume. The story of the “book boats” symbolizes this democratization of knowledge. One contemporary account notes that the Erie Canal’s floating bookstore offered everything from theology to mechanics to popular novels, “reaching the aspiring and open[ing] to them the chief treasures of the world – those stored up in books” (wiki.org). For farmers’ sons and daughters in towns like Palmyra, Fayette, or Rochester, this was revolutionary. A local teenager in the 1820s could suddenly read Thomas Paine’s deist tracts, or Captain Cook’s voyages, or medical handbooks, or strange histories of lost civilizations. It is little wonder, then, that creative religious syntheses began to appear. Joseph Smith, for one, lived a stone’s throw from the canal; as noted, the very Bible he used for his later “Inspired Translation” was a Phinney Bible likely purchased from a canal boat

shipment (wiki.org). We know Smith also had access to newspapers (which serialized travelogues and antiquarian findings) and to libraries of friends who owned eclectic books. The Millerites similarly benefited from the era’s print culture – Miller’s Lectures were printed and reprinted, and charts of prophecy were copied and distributed so widely that even people who never met Miller personally could follow his logic. Ellen White’s family, though poor, were avid readers of religious periodicals; later, as a church leader, she maintained a personal library and urged others to “educate yourselves” by reading. The Fox sisters’ triumph was unthinkable without the newspaper press to spread their story. John Humphrey Noyes of the Oneida Community, another Burned-Over figure (he founded a utopian commune in 1848, teaching perfectionism and complex marriage), was highly literate – he had read theological works on holiness and even studied law at one point. Noyes printed a journal (The Oneida Circular) to promote his commune’s ideas. In fact, nearly every new sect in the Burned-Over District either started a newspaper or published books to defend its doctrines. 

In this light, the charismatic “prophets” of upstate New York were not isolated mystics but avid participants in the information revolution of their time. The Burned-Over District earned its name from fiery revivals, but those revivals were fueled by print and literacy. As one scholar put it, by the 1830s upstate New York had “an abundance of local newspapers” covering revival happenings, creating a feedback loop – religion became news, and news helped religion spread. The Erie Canal boats carried not only grain and timber, but also Bibles and tracts; the postal routes carried sermon pamphlets and sectarian newspapers to the frontier. A former skeptic like Miller could read a Bible commentary and turn it into a millennial prophecy chart; a farm girl like Ellen Harmon could hear a traveling lecturer on health or holiness and later mirror those ideas in her visionary writings; even hucksters could study the psychology of crowds from popular pamphlets and then manipulate audiences at revival meetings or séances.

In conclusion, the “book boats” and broader print culture of the 1800s democratized knowledge in the Burned-Over District, enabling a generation of self-styled prophets – male and female – to astonish their neighbors with seemingly new revelations. These individuals often founded publishing houses and wrote influential books of their own precisely because they understood the power of the written word that had empowered them. The canal’s floating library was, in essence, the precursor to the public library and the internet for that frontier: it put information into the hands of the masses. And in the hands of inspired (or sometimes scheming) personalities, that information became the catalyst for new faiths.

The Burned-Over District was a unique place where religious fervor met the age of print. The prophets and prophetesses who emerged may have worn the guise of divine messengers, but many of their “new” ideas were kindled by the books and knowledge that had only recently become available to them. Their stories remind us that revolutions of the spirit are often born from revolutions in information – and in 19th-century New York, the book boats brought both enlightenment and illusion to port.

How they rose: a simple playbook (seen over and over)

1. Idea spark — often via eclectic reading (Bibles; prophetic charts; health tracts; occult curiosities).
2. Performance & place — revivals, visions, séances, testimonies in canal towns with packet docks.
3. Leverage the press — secure a printer/newspaper; serialize, pamphlet, reprint.
4. Own the means — build publishing houses, colporteur corps, and itinerant lecture circuits.
5. Network effects — canal + cheap paper + floating/itinerant bookstores = audience acquisition machine.

Works Cited (MLA)

Birdsall, Ralph. The Story of Cooperstown. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18621/18621-h/18621-h.htm. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. Project Gutenberg

Bordonaro, (Thomas X.). “Book Boats.” ErieCanal.org. https://www.eriecanal.org/book_boats.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. eriecanal.org

“Books in the Wilderness: Some 19th-Century Upstate Publishers.” By Madeleine B. Stern. Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 44, 1950. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23149980. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. jstor.org

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Mormon 9.” Scriptures, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/morm/9. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. The Church of Jesus Christ

— — —. “Book of Mormon Translation (Gospel Topics Essay).” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. The Church of Jesus Christ

Joseph Smith Papers. “Bible Used for Bible Revision (1828 H. & E. Phinney).” https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/bible-used-for-bible-revision/5. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. josephsmithpapers.org

Jackson, Kent P. “Joseph Smith’s Cooperstown Bible: The Historical Context of the Bible Used in the Joseph Smith Translation.” BYU Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 1, 2001, pp. 41–70. BYU ScholarsArchive, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol40/iss1/3/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. BYU ScholarsArchive

Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. “Advent Herald (1840–1877).” Milton Hook, 15 May 2023, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=B8SX. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. encyclopedia.adventist.org

White, Ellen G. Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4a. 1864. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/705.24. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. m.egwwritings.org

White, Ellen G. Testimonies for the Church, vol. 3 (1875). Quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods. Ellen G. White Writings, https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/384.3093. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. m.egwwritings.org

“Signed Confession of Margaret Fox Kane, October 21, 1888.” New York World. Reprinted at Paranormal Encyclopedia, https://www.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/f/fox-sisters/confession.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. paranormal-encyclopedia.com

Davenport, Reuben B. The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: Being the True Story of the Fox Sisters. G. W. Dillingham, 1897. Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33506/33506-h/33506-h.htm. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. Project Gutenberg

“How a Hoax by Two Sisters Helped Spark the Spiritualism Craze.” History.com, 12 Oct. 2022, https://www.history.com/articles/ghost-hoax-spiritualism-fox-sisters. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. HISTORY CHANNEL ITALIA

BurnedOverDistrict.org (curated site).
— “Religious Innovation, Revival Techniques, and the Rise of New Denominations.” https://burnedoverdistrict.org/religious-innovation-revival-techniques-and-the-rise-of-new-denominations/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. The Burned-Over District
— “The Burned-Over District and the Second Great Awakening: A Crucible of Religious Fervor.” https://burnedoverdistrict.org/the-burned-over-district-and-the-second-great-awakening-a-crucible-of-religious-fervor/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. The Burned-Over District
— “Chapter 3: Social Mobility, Religious Competition, and the Quest for Meaning.” https://burnedoverdistrict.org/chapter-3-social-mobility-religious-competition-and-the-quest-for-meaning/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025. The Burned-Over DistriNew York State Library. “The Erie Canal Turns 200!” 1 Oct. 2025, https://nyslibrary.libguides.com/blogs/tbbl/news/the-erie-canal-turns-200. Accessed 11 Oct. 2025.