What do racing horses have to do with Plain buggies? And why do some feel safer in a buggy than a car? Reporter Corey Kilgannon recently visited Plain communities in New York to learn about buggy safety from the local Mennonite and Amish populations. The result is a pair of articles in the New York Times. In “Quaint Buggies, With a Deadly Side“, Kilgannon explores…
Sam Mullet was sentenced in 2013 to 15 years in prison for orchestrating beard and hair-cutting attacks on Amish. Mullet later saw his sentence reduced to a little under 11 years. If you missed the story at the time, Mullet was the bishop of a breakaway Amish group which began following decidedly un-Amish practices, detailed in the book Renegade Amish. These included attacks by Mullet’s followers on…
A Pennsylvania court has ruled against an Amish family, ordering them to do something they staunchly oppose: After a legal battle spanning more than five years, a Pennsylvania court has agreed with a lower court ruling that ordered a Warren County Amish family to connect to a municipal sewer, even though doing so requires the use of an electric pump. In an opinion issued Jan….
“For Thanksgiving my extended Kuhns family came to town and for entertainment the 2 year olds were playing church,” writes Karleen Kuhns. After viewing Karleen’s videos, I realized they were too cute to not share with you. In the first of three videos, one of the boys sings the opening to the Loblied (“Hymn of Praise”, sung as the second hymn in every Amish church…
Thanks to everyone for another great year. It’s been over 11 years now since I fired up this site in November 2006, really having no idea at the time where posting my observations on the Amish might lead. Thousands of posts and nearly 50,000 blog comments later, it’s been one of the most enriching things I’ve ever been a part of. I hope that you…
It seems like every year around this time we get a video of Amish out having some winter fun. We’ve previously seen Amish people skiing in Knox County, Ohio, and in Lowville, New York. There was also a clip of a buggy doing parking lot snow donuts. This short video, shot by Tara Hayward after Christmas dinner, shows an Amishman in Morley, Michigan, getting ski-towed down…
Ruth Streicher lives in an Amish community on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. Ruth recently shared thoughts on how Amish celebrate Christmas for the Manitoulin Expositor. First, as with most things Amish, Christmas traditions vary: “We celebrate the birth of Christ,” Ruth Streicher of Tehkummah smiled gently when asked about the Amish Christmas traditions. “But there are differences in how families observe Christmas. Some are more conservative…
Should Amish be required to install seat belts and other safety features common to motor vehicles? That’s the idea behind a new ordinance up for consideration tomorrow in Wood County, Wisconsin: Horse-drawn vehicles would need windshields, seat belts, child car seats and rear-view mirrors if officials in Wisconsin’s Wood County pass an ordinance that will be considered Tuesday. Amish and other religious groups that rely…
Diane Bell’s story sounds like something from a novel or a Hallmark holiday film. Diane was left on an Amish porch as a 3-month-old, over 40 years ago. Her story was told in an article featured in Lancaster Online which we looked at here last year. From the original article: Forty years ago, a widowed Amish woman and her daughter watched from their window late one night as…
Interesting column this week from Gloria Yoder. Gloria, an Amish mother from southern Illinois, writes the Amish Cook column. It’s not unusual to find Amish serving as foster families for non-Amish children. When I sold books in Amish communities, I would bump into these situations from time to time. This week Gloria answers several questions on fostering among the Amish. The Yoders are foster parents in addition to…