The Swiss Amish

Inside an Amish Home: Swiss Amish

Following up last week’s look inside a New York Amish living room, we have a couple more photos of an Amish home interior, courtesy of SUNY-Potsdam anthropology professor Karen Johnson-Weiner. These shots were taken in a home in the Swiss Amish settlement in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. Swiss Amish tend to be fairly plain, and I think this interior reflects that. A few things jumped out…

Buggy signs, part 2

After regretting (on the original buggy sign post) that we had no Allen County, Indiana sign, reader Torey has kindly shared this photo, taken near the town of Grabill. You may be aware that Amish in Allen County are considered “Swiss Amish”.  Swiss Amish differ in a few ways from most other Amish (most Amish are considered to be of “Pennsylvania German” ethnicity). Swiss Amish…

My top five Amish settlements

Who loves rankings? (everyone loves rankings)–today I offer my personal top-five favorite Amish settlements.  I hope you’ll indulge my self-indulgence for this one day (I’ve been wanting to do this post for a long time!).  I haven’t been everywhere, but of the 17-or-so communities I’ve visited, these are the ones I would most readily revisit (and do when I can), and why. 1.Daviess County, Indiana–I…

The Amish Church District

The Amish arrange themselves into compact groupings known as church districts. Each district has its own name, usually a geographically-based one–Lamoni South, Randolph, and Crab Orchard are examples of places providing names for districts, these being found in Iowa, Mississippi, and Kentucky Amish communities. Since the Amish travel by horse-and-buggy to one another’s homes for Sunday service, most districts are grouped together in a logical,…

Those Yodeling Amish

Random fact: The Amish yodel.  As in yodel-ay-eee-ooo. Not all Amish, though, and maybe not quite like that. This is a ‘Swiss Amish‘ practice.  Within the Swiss ethnic sub-group, Chad L. Thompson tells us  (see Anthropological Linguistics Journal vol. 38 no. 3) it’s mainly done in two settlements that straddle Fort Wayne, Indiana–the Adams County bunch to the south, and to a lesser extent, Allen…