I agree. Though Finney was apparently the author of the phase "Burned Over District," he was certainly a part of bringing it to cinders. The area at the time was certainly frontier, full of freedom-lovers, free thinkers, individualism, danger, enterprise, and experimenters. Just reading through the biographies of people who influenced the life there is greatly educational. I used to wonder at the doings of Moses Van Campen and the bloody Iroquois, and Philip Church, son of Angelica Schuyler Church who was sister-in-law to Alexander Hamilton, and many other New York and Pennsylvania wild frontiersmen. Much of that spirit whem I lived in Rushford and Angelica, NY. Miss it now --
For example my Grandmother Grandfather, a successful businessman dropped every thing to be a missionary, beats the hell out of me.