Amish Communities

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)

We’ve got a selection of photos from a Swartzentruber Amish settlement in Missouri today. This is Shannon County; this is in the vicinity of Summersville and Hartshorn. The photo collection is by Don Burke, who has passed through this community several times over the years. The community was started in 2006 according to the State […]

Continue Reading A Virtual Visit To A Small & Plain Amish Community (35 Photos)

Fourteen Amish families settled in a corner of Kansas (Hartford in Lyon County) in the summer of 2020. That community just held a benefit to raise funds for a new school (article in the Emporia Gazette). Amishman Eddie Yoder explained that the event had two purposes: “to raise money for a much-needed school building and […]

Continue Reading Kansas Amish Hold Benefit For New School – And To Meet The English

I did a video giving my list of five friendliest Amish communities. I also discuss one well-known and large community that did not make the list. And, at the end I share two communities that I consider not-so-friendly, and why. If you’d like to see the written version of this video, you can find that […]

Continue Reading 5 Friendliest Amish Communities (& 2 Not-so-friendly) [Video]