)

SOURCE: "The Prophet," in The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850, Cornell, 1950, pp. 138-50.

[In the following excerpt, Cross suggests that the doctrines and organization of Mormonism were products not of the American frontier but of "that Yankee, rural, emotionalized, and rapidly maturing culture which characterized western New York so markedly in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. "]

The Mormon Church, having survived and grown in the last hundred years as did none of its companion novelties, interests the present generation far more than any other aspect of Burned-over District history. Yet its impact upon the region and period from which it sprang was extremely limited. The Saints made their first westward removal immediately upon founding the religion, when they numbered not more than a hundred persons. The obscurity and scarcity of local material on the subject reinforces...