Back one more time with another edition of five Amish surname histories. If you missed previous posts, you can find them here: Part 1 (Beachy, Swartzentruber, Lapp, Hostetler, Stoltzfus) Part 2 (Zook, Gingerich, Troyer, King, Lehman) Part 3 (Yoder, Schrock, Fisher, Stutzman, Wagler) These are excerpted from Joseph Stoll’s series “Amish and Mennonite Family Names,” which appeared in Family Life from December 1968 to March…
In another sign of things heading in the direction of “normal”, the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center in Berlin, Ohio (Holmes County) re-opened this week. The center says in a Facebook post that they have made a few upgrades in the past months. This is the place where you’ll find the giant “cyclorama” painting of Anabaptist history called Behalt (the word means “to keep” or…
We’ve got five more histories of common Amish surnames today. If you missed previous editions, here’s Part 1 (Beachy, Swartzentruber, Lapp, Hostetler, Stoltzfus) and Part 2 (Zook, Gingerich, Troyer, King, Lehman). The following histories are from the Family Life series “Amish and Mennonite Family Names” by Joseph Stoll, which ran from December 1968 to March 1969. I’ve added my own comments in some places in…
Last week we looked at the histories of 5 common Amish family names – Beachy, Swartzentruber, Lapp, Hostetler, and Stoltzfus. Let’s pick back up this week with five more. I used your suggestions from last week’s post comments to put together this week’s list. If there are other names you’d like to see, let us know in the comments here. I’ll do at least one…
Over half a century ago, Amish writer Joseph Stoll penned a series of articles on Amish surnames, titled “Amish and Mennonite Family Names.” These were published in the then-fledgling Family Life monthly, in four parts spanning December 1968 to March 1969. I’ve chosen origin stories for five common names to share with you today. Where did common Amish names come from? Do they have any…
I came across the following list of Amish church rules in a book called Amish Roots: A Treasury of History, Wisdom, and Lore, edited by John A. Hostetler. These were the rules of a church in Mifflin County, PA in 1897, as recorded by a woman named Sadie Newman. Sadie was a convert to the Amish, having worked for an Amish family and joining the…
One thing that has always fascinated me are the Amish communities which have a long history – but for one reason or another, today are surprisingly small in size. With the high Amish birth rate, and today most Amish choosing to remain Amish, you would expect most communities to continue growing larger with the benefit of time. We see this in many examples today, as…
Joseph Donnermeyer of Ohio State University today shares with us an article published two weeks ago in the Budget newspaper. In it, Joe looks back at all the Amish settlement attempts throughout their history in North America. He highlights some interesting figures, including a total of 342 settlement attempts since 2000. At first that seemed higher than I’d expect, but it only underscores the growing…
This past December, a group of Amishmen visited the White House and met with the president and vice-president. After the report of this unusual meeting emerged, Steven Nolt, author of A History of the Amish, shared a follow-up, adding some interesting detail about Amish encounters with past presidents. Steve first addresses the question: Was this the first time Amish people were guests of a president…
In February we had a look at the first Amish settlement in North America, located at Northkill in Pennsylvania’s Berks County (founded approximately 1740). I recently came across an interesting Ontario historical blog with a photo of a plaque marking the location of the first Amish settlement in Canada, which came about some 80+ years after Northkill. Here’s the text from the plaque: THE FIRST…