The Amish in Arkansas

The Amish of Salem, Arkansas

The Amish of Salem, Arkansas

Don Burke has been on a tour of Amish settlements in the South and Midwest. These are his photos and account of the small community at Salem, Arkansas (Fulton County), one of only two Amish settlements in the Natural State. You can view more photos at Don’s Arkansas Amish Flickr album. — Nestled in the Ozarks of north-central Arkansas, within a dozen miles of the Missouri state line,…

Bridging an Arkansas Amish community

Here’s a neat story I missed during Christmas, worth taking a look back at. A couple reasons why–one, it’s about an Arkansas Amish community–and you don’t hear too much about Amish in Arkansas, owing to the small size and remoteness of the Natural State Amish population.  Two, it ties in with an issue we discussed earlier this week–challenges created by obstacles like busy roads running through Amish…

Amish population statistics

Just got a hot tip from the Young Center that the 2009 Amish population statistics are up at the Amish Studies web site. A couple quick things I noticed between this year’s and last year’s numbers:  on the lower end, Arkansas has jumped from 1 to 3 settlements, and the Maine Amish, Montana Amish, and Kansas Amish have all added a settlement. Ohio, Pennsylvania, and…

Amish growing like mushrooms after a rain shower

An AP story has just hit the wire on population growth among the Amish.  This coincides with the release of additional information on trends in Amish growth and migration from here at the Young Center. The Amish studies site now lists trend data for the 1992 to 2008 period as well as the 2007 to 2008 one-year trend. The most surprising statistic:  according to the…

Southern Amish

Southern Amish

photo:  Scroonch From Lancaster, Pennsylvania, through Ohio and Indiana and on out to other long-established settlements in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas, we tend to associate the Amish with the nation’s middle latitudes.  Since their earliest years in America, the Amish have gravitated to the cooler climes of these corn and dairy regions.  However, the Amish have also had a long history of attempting to settle…