Amish Communities

Here are some of the things I saw yesterday visiting Amish communities in Kentucky. I made it to four different settlements, stopped in a couple of stores, and met some nice people. Kentucky is increasingly loaded with Amish settlements (around 50 of them) and it seems like wherever you are, you’re a stone’s throw from […]

Continue Reading 10 Views From Kentucky Amish Communities

I’ve been out visiting Amish communities for the past couple of weeks. Last week I was in Colorado, visiting four of the state’s six settlements. The views were spectacular and it was nice to see how Amish live in the West. Distances are greater and several Amish people I spoke with noted the dry climate […]

Continue Reading Visiting Amish Communities (CO, VA, KY, OH, WV)

Joe Donnermeyer of the Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities guest posts today with a look at multi-settlement Amish counties across America. In March I did a list of 10 Amish “supercounties” – which I defined as having at least five settlements (full or partial) within their borders. Joe expands on that list with this guest […]

Continue Reading Multi-Settlement Amish Counties

Reader Rebecca Rury recently took a visit to the only Texas Amish community, at Beeville in Bee County. She stopped in at the community’s best-known Amish business – Borntrager’s Combination Shop – but writes that she “didn’t get to chat with Mr. Borntrager as he was busy shoeing a horse.” Mr. Borntrager is the owner […]

Continue Reading Stopping in at the Bee County, Texas Amish Community

So in addition to the 2021 statewide Amish population numbers which came out two weeks ago, we now have the updated list of individual Amish settlements for 2021. There are around 600 of them. You’ll find it at the Elizabethtown College Young Center Amish Studies website here. This guide provides the following information for each […]

Continue Reading 2021 Amish Settlement List (600+ Communities)

Last week we saw the release of the 2021 Amish population figures at the Young Center website, showing an estimated Amish population of 361,635 Amish in 608 settlements. Joe Donnermeyer has dug deep into the settlement data – particularly a separate set of data which he discusses below – and today presents us with a […]

Continue Reading The 14 “Two-State” Amish Settlements

The new Amish population estimates are out for 2021 via the Young Center at Elizabethtown College. We’ll have some posts related to this coming up, including from Joe Donnermeyer of Ohio State University. In the meantime you can find the tables and map here. Some quick facts from the latest figures: The estimated total Amish […]

Continue Reading The Amish Population in 2021

From the “Off-the-Amish-Beaten-Path Files” (not really a thing, but maybe it should be a thing): Reader Denise sends in a nice little account of an Amish store in a corner of Iowa. The community is Chariton, in Lucas County. I know little about it beyond what Denise shares, and what clues I can gather here […]

Continue Reading Off The Beaten Path: A Friendly Amish Store in Iowa

I did a video looking at ten unusual Amish communities. Across 600 different communities and dozens of affiliations, you can notice quite a number of differences in the ways Amish people live and manifest their faith. So what makes these communities unusual or atypical? It could be something about how they worship, or get around, […]

Continue Reading 10 Unusual Amish Communities (Video)

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of an unusual (at least at the time) Amish settlement in Indiana. In December of 1991, two Amish families departed Lancaster County for their new home 700 miles away in the Hoosier State. New settlements were less common then than they are today, and Lancaster Amish […]

Continue Reading The Amish of Parke County, Indiana (24 Photos)