Whitney Rogers Cross (1913–1955), was a mid-20th-century historian, best known as the author of ''The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800 – 1850'' (Cornell University Press, 1950).

Biography

Cross was born in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

in 1913. After completing an M.A. in History at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...

, he taught high school in

Painted Post, New York Painted Post is a village in Steuben County, New York. The village is in the town of Erwin, west of the city of Corning. The population was 1,809 at the 2010 census. The name comes from a Seneca carved post found by explorers at the junction ...

from 1936 to 1939, when he left to enter a graduate program at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. Cross’s teachers at Harvard included Perry Miller, widely considered to be one of the inventors of the sub-discipline now commonly referred to as intellectual history; Frederick Merk, a social historian influenced by the “frontier hypothesis” of

Frederick Jackson Turner Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian during the early 20th century, based at the University of Wisconsin until 1910, and then Harvard University. He was known primarily for his frontier thes ...

; and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., whose pioneering work in both social history and women’s history shaped a generation of scholars. While working on his dissertation with Schlesinger, Cross served as the first head of the Local and Regional History Collection at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

. After completing his degree in 1945, he held teaching positions at

Connecticut College Connecticut College (Conn College or Conn) is a private liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. It is a residential, four-year undergraduate institution with nearly all of its approximately 1,815 students living on campus. The college w ...

for Women, at Smith College, and at

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State Coll ...

. He died in 1955.

''The Burned-over District''

''The Burned-over District'' asserts that during the first half of the nineteenth century, the inhabitants of the western third of

New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. stat ...

showed themselves to be atypically willing to give themselves over to various “isms,” including revivalism,

Mormonism Mormonism is the religious tradition and theology of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity started by Joseph Smith in Western New York in the 1820s and 1830s. As a label, Mormonism has been applied to various aspects of ...

Millerism The Millerites were the followers of the teachings of William Miller, who in 1831 first shared publicly his belief that the Second Advent of Jesus Christ would occur in roughly the year 1843–1844. Coming during the Second Great Awakening, his ...

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and Mind-body dualism, dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (w ...

, AntiMasonic agitation, abolitionism,

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, and experiments in

communal living An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which is designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork from the start. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, ...

. Whether this area was in fact unusually hospitable to revivalism and social reform movements is now considered to be open to question, but this is beside the point. It was Cross’s methodology and the contours of his argument that struck his readers as innovative and worthy of imitation. Basically, Cross used materials commonly associated with local or regional history—demographic data, commercial records, and eyewitness accounts from relatively obscure individuals—to argue that the social environment constructed in this area at this time made the inhabitants more willing and more likely than most Americans of this era to pursue both their own improvement and the improvement of society as a whole. The book was reprinted in paperback as recently as 2006.

References

Judith Wellman, “Crossing over Cross: Whitney Cross’s ''Burned-Over District'' as Social History” (''

Reviews in American History ''Reviews in American History'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1973 and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. It publishes reviews of new books on the topic of American history, as well as retrospectives on ...

'' 17:1 (March 1989), 159 – 174).

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cross, Whitney 1913 births 1955 deaths Connecticut College faculty Cornell University staff Harvard University alumni History of social movements Writers from Rochester, New York Smith College faculty University of Rochester alumni West Virginia University faculty 20th-century American historians 20th-century American male writers Historians from New York (state) American male non-fiction writers