Where do the Amish live? A new resource has been published listing the locations of nearly 600 Amish settlements across North America. You can access the list at the Young Center’s Amish Studies website.
This list actually includes two nations – the US, and Canada with its much smaller Amish population. Organized by state and province, it provides some basic useful information for each settlement:
- the county (or census division, for Canadian settlements)
- main town or geographical location the settlement is associated with
- year of founding
- number of church districts
- estimated population for the settlement
Rather than being organized by date of founding, as previous lists were, this list is ordered by county. This allows you to quickly see how many settlements are located in a given county.
In some cases this can mean multiple communities. Scanning through the list I note many counties containing all or parts of 3 settlements, and quite a few with 4, 5, or more – including Ashtabula County, Ohio (6), Steuben County, New York (4), Todd County, Minnesota (5), Clark County, Wisconsin (4), Osceola County, Michigan (6), and Crawford County, Pennslylvania (7).
This compilation should come in quite handy, and I know some of you have been looking forward to it. It updates the previous resource, a list which dated to 2013.
Finally, it’s a lot of effort to put this together, and credit is due the hard work of three individuals:
Statistics were compiled by Edsel Burdge, Jr., Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College, in cooperation with Joseph F. Donnermeyer, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, and with assistance fromn David Luthy, Heritage Historical Library, Aylmer, Ontario.
Access the list here.
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Thanks for sharing this. I have been looking forward to this latest update of Amish settlements. It will be interesting to compare current statistics with the statistics from 2013 of settlements I’m familiar with. I have been a volunteer host at Menno-Hof Amish/Mennonite Information Center in Shipshewana, Indiana, several weeks the past five years and often referred to the 2013 list when visitors from all over the U.S. would ask if there is an Amish settlement near them, how large it is, etc. I shared the 2013 listing with several Amish friends and am looking forward to sharing this new list with them also. Thanks to the compilers — it must have been a very time-consuming project.
Glad to hear it Al. It was the case that these lists seemed to come out every five years or so, so this was a bit of a longer wait – but that is not at all a knock on the compilers who deserve a bucket of kudos for this work. It is not easy to keep up with given how many settlements there are, Amish migration, etc. I know people will find it of great interest like I do, including in the Plain community as well.
Erik, when you make your journey to Wisc you maybe should think about the duration of your stay! Seeing the list of settlements in our state, there’s a lot to visit! I’ve been in several mentioned, but always fun to take a road trip to unknow territory. 🙂
Well the list keeps growing:) Btw I read the online reviews for Mishler’s recently. They have a lot of fans out there! Also saw some photos of the store.