Amish retreat leader Sam Shetler will not be tried in Cooper County, Missouri — the county where he ran the Mercy and Truth Retreat, and where he was arrested in March. Prosecutors have agreed to move the case. This is the latest in a case we’ve been following since Shetler’s arrest in late March. If you’re new to the story, he made his first court…
Just like your car, Amish buggies – not to mention their horses – need the occasional wash too. That’s the idea behind an upcoming event in the Shipshewana, Indiana area, passed along to us by Jim Halverson. This is the ad for a benefit buggy wash to be held about two weeks from now, on Saturday August 15: BENEFIT BUGGY WASH to be on Saturday,…
The Morrisons Cove Herald has a fuller writeup now of the July 21 Bedford Township (Bedford County, PA) meeting we’ve been following. It’s the one where supervisors were set to vote on the steel wheel and manure ordinance, but in the end – likely responding to the backlash from attendees – didn’t. We first covered the proposed ordinance a couple weeks back, then wrote about…
Another ending of sorts, this one on a story out of Williams County, Ohio we’ve been following since November. The driver who injured Martha Wagler, a 27-year-old Amish woman, and her two children in a hit-and-run crash last fall has taken a plea deal. As we covered back in November and again in December, Wagler’s buggy was struck from behind on November 12 in her community. The driver…
Auctions To Support The DDC Clinic Are Happening in Spartansburg, Pennsylvania (August 7) and Middlefield, Ohio (August 28) Two benefit auctions this August support the DDC Clinic in Middlefield, Ohio – an Amish-founded nonprofit that has identified more rare genetic disorders than any clinic in the world. In the late 1990s, a group of Amish mothers in Geauga County, Ohio – whose special-needs children met…
Kentucky is home to America’s eighth-largest Amish population. Over 16,000 Amish live in more than 50 settlements across the state. These ten communities are the largest in Kentucky, based on the most current Amish population estimates. Population numbers via Young Center for Anabaptist & Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College (source link at bottom). 1. Munfordville Munfordville (Hart County) Community founded: 1989 Total Amish population: 2,525…
Looking at its name alone, the Amish Black Box Phone has an air of secrecy or mystery to it. Is it some sort of clandestine Amish spy-ops device? A tool meant for conveying bad news? Of course, many of us will connect “black box” with the recording devices used to record communication in plane crashes, another morbid association. But it’s none of those things. Rather,…
A Population Profile of the Greater Holmes County settlement of Northeast Ohio Out of 700-plus Amish settlements, there are four that can be considered super-sized. In previous editions of The Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities (JPAC), profiles for three already were published. The first of these was by Lawrence Greksa about the Greater Geauga, Ohio settlement, published in volume 1, issue 2. This was followed…
Ben & Rose are back, this time covering a hymn beloved by many. “How Great Thou Art” went up on YouTube yesterday, their first new song since “Stroll Over Heaven” at the end of June. The hymn has an interesting history. It started life as a Swedish poem, “O Store Gud,” written by Carl Boberg in 1885, reportedly after he was caught out in a…
A very sad and awful story is now coming to an end of sorts, as Samuel Hochstetler has pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in the death of 28-year-old Amish woman Rosanna Kinsinger. Kinsinger was found dead in her Meigs County, Ohio home back in March 2025. Hochstetler, 18 at the time, was arrested and charged nearly two months later in the crimes. After a series…
We pretty regularly feature posts on the Amish in Missouri on this site. So it’s probably no surprise to many readers that it is the #7 state when it comes to total Amish population. In a new piece on Amish in the state, the Columbia Missourian draws attention to another noteworthy Missouri Amish statistic. Namely, that the Show Me State has added more communities than…
This Amish home listing in Frazeysburg, Ohio contains the description “some of the most beautiful farm ground you can imagine.” Hard to argue after seeing these lovely photos. The property is 25 acres with the Wakatomika Creek running right along its western edge (visible in the photo below). The presence of an icehouse building (we’ll see that farther down) suggests this is an Amish group…
Sixteen months after starting the process, Amish Kitchen columnist Lovina Eicher’s youngest son Kevin finally has his handicap-accessible buggy. This week, Lovina shares a closer look with readers of her column. Kevin, age 20, has muscular dystrophy. He gets around on a mobility scooter (see photo further down). But at about 6’4″ and 230 pounds, getting him in and out of a standard buggy has…
A proposed ordinance that would ban steel-wheel buggies in a Pennsylvania township is on hold after dozens of residents packed a supervisors’ meeting Tuesday night to speak against it. Despite the planned vote, Bedford Township supervisors (Bedford County) did not take one in the end. They now say they plan to meet with the local Amish community – which they apparently never did (more on…
It appears the Amish are putting down roots in a state that they have rarely settled in the past — Mississippi. In fact, for the past three decades, the Magnolia State has had just one small Amish community. But a second is now arising in Prentiss County in northeast Mississippi, according to a new report. At least one family, and possibly more, has already moved…
So I couldn’t resist commenting on this one. You may have come across slideshow-style “listicle” posts on mass media sites like MSN or AOL. I’ve been seeing a lot of them lately about the Amish (sometimes they link to this website as a source, so no complaints there). Things like “10 surprising technologies the Amish use” or “The 15 largest Amish communities”. Often enough, the…
The matter at hand is a major road overpass project in Seymour, Missouri – meant to help improve safety in the state’s largest Amish settlement. It’s intended to go up in a part of the community where they are “genuinely scared” to drive their buggies, according to the former mayor. We first came across this story back in January, when we learned the Amish were…
A proposed ordinance in Bedford County, Pennsylvania would force local Amish to adapt their buggies to be more “road-friendly”, at least from the perspective of some residents. At the same time, others are concerned it could “disproportionately impact” the Amish community. From the report at WJAC: BEDFORD COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) — A proposed ordinance in Bedford Township is drawing scrutiny ahead of a vote scheduled…
Nora Kurtz is a member of a Geauga County, Ohio Amish church. Today she shares some favorite dishes from her childhood – and some she still loves today, including bread soup and more. Anyone who lives in or around a large Amish community is probably going to be at least somewhat familiar with “Amish food”. Fried chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed vegetables, pies and puddings…
That’s according to the latest Top 10 list just released by USA Today, which pegs several Amish Country/PA Dutch-style buffets as the best in the country. The top three, in fact, are all in that category. In order, they are: Shady Maple Smorgasbord (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) Der Dutchman (Sarasota, Florida) Miller’s Smorgasbord (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) And not only that, but a fourth Amish Country buffet…
Reader Shawn has been visiting the Amish community at Pearisburg, Virginia for over a decade now. The first visit of Shawn’s we saw here was back in 2014, followed by a return in 2016 to check on the newly opened Walker Valley Market. I’ve made a couple of visits myself – one on a rainy February day in 2020, and another in December 2020 when…
Grocery prices are on a lot of people’s minds right now, and for good reason. The USDA’s moderate-cost food plan puts a family of four at around $1,385 a month as of this writing. Scale that up to a household of ten mouths to feed and you’re well past $2,500. Why do I say ten? Well, that’s an average-sized Amish family – two parents and…