The 20-family Smyrna Mills, Maine Amish community, founded in 1996, is the oldest in a state with relatively few Amish. A recent article in the Bangor Daily News visits a Smyrna Mills Amish business, Sturdi-Bilt Storage Buildings, a maker of portable structures including sheds and tiny homes. You can lean more about it in the short video below. You’ll also notice one unusual element in this community…
It’s hard to believe that yesterday was the ten-year anniversary of the Nickel Mines school shootings. On the morning of October 2nd, 2006, local milk truck driver Charles Roberts IV entered the West Nickel Mines School, barricaded the doors, and proceeded to shoot ten Amish schoolgirls, killing five of them. At the time, the rapid Amish response of forgiveness of the shooter resonated around the…
Amish in Illinois have made news by moving the oldest-known Amish home in the state, using the power of eight mighty Belgian horses. Belgians are a common breed used by Amish for farm work. This past Tuesday morning they found themselves with the uncommon task of transporting a 150-year-old farm home–though it turns out they only did a small part of the job: A team…
Tired of presidential election coverage? Well that makes two of us. But I feel the Amish vote topic, which we touched on in the spring, is worth revisiting for a couple of reasons. Back in May we shared news of a Political Action Committee targeting Amish voters (“Amish PAC”) in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two key swing states, to generate votes for Donald Trump. The Amish…
Do Amish farm children hold the key to preventing asthma? For some time now, the Amish have been known to have lower rates of asthma. But in a new academic paper released yesterday (New England Journal of Medicine), researchers have discovered a key difference in Amish children, who typically grow up on small family farms reliant on horsepower, and Hutterite children, who live on large…
Ever heard of Horse Progress Days? It is an annual event heavily attended by Amish (we’ve covered a previous edition in Michigan here and here). Here to explain more is David Arment (author of all photos below), with a look at this year’s event, held in northern Indiana. Horse Progress Days was held July 1st and 2nd at the MEC (Michiana Event Center) North of…
Want to see what a very plain Amish home looks like inside? There are currently photos online at Zillow.com showing the exterior and interior of a Swartzentruber Amish home up for sale. The price on this home, located in the area of Pulaski, New York, is $94,900. It’s listed as having 2 bedrooms, no bathrooms (Swartzentruber Amish do not use indoor plumbing), and having 1,512…
As of 2016, there are over 500 Amish-settled locations in the world. Most of those communities are quite small. For every large settlement like Lancaster County there are dozens of 1- and 2-church district communities. The Glens Falls Post-Star recently published a well-written and researched 3-part look at one of those small settlements, a relatively new Amish outpost in eastern New York. Amish moved into the Whitehall…
How far would you go to discover your origin? A recent AP story tells the fascinating and moving tale of Diane Bell, who was abandoned as a three-month-old on an Amish farmhouse porch: Forty years ago, a widowed Amish woman and her daughter watched from their window late one night as someone in dark clothing walked up to their farmhouse near Gordonville, Lancaster County, and left…
Each year the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies publishes Amish population estimates on their Amish Studies web site. As of today those are not yet available. However this AP report previews some of the details of the population survey, with input from senior scholar Steven Nolt. Here are 3 takeaways from the article: 1. South America – First–and somewhat surprisingly–there are now two Amish settlements in South…