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Vermont's Burned-Over District: Patterns of Community Development and Religious Activity, 1761-1850. By P. Jeffrey Potash. (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1991. xvi + 277 pp. $60.00, ISBN 0-926019-52-X.)
The purpose of this book is to contribute to the social history of Vermont by investigating patterns of community development in three different towns in the Champlain Valley. Middlebury, Shoreham, and Cornwall were all settled during the mid-1760s. Middlebury became a populous regional commercial and industrial center; Shoreham developed into a wealthy farming town; Cornwall remained a comparatively undistinguished community. In three lengthy sections, the author examines and compares three different aspects of life in these communities.
Each section advances a separate thesis, interesting in itself though not related to an encompassing argument. The first section is framed within the well-known debate between Turner school historians, who see...