Yesterday I visited the small Amish community in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. It was a crisp early spring day. The people in this community, a Union Grove, NC daughter settlement, certainly chose a beautiful area to settle in. It’s a area of rolling hills, with lovely valleys and spans of thickly-wooded land. The settlement itself lies near the town of Chatham. The countryside has a lot…
How about a little tour through Holmes County, Ohio? I realized I still have a lot of photos from last year’s visit. Since I’ll be going to some new communities starting next week, I thought it would be a good time to share them with you. These were taken over a couple days in early December. You’ll notice the changing weather conditions, from bright and…
Like my visit to Enon Valley, PA in December, I only had a brief time at the Amish community at Halifax County, VA. I was returning home from my multi-state Amish trip after 2000+ miles traveled. And as you’ll see from these photos, it was the end of the day. Still, it was worth the journey, mainly for one family I met while there. The Amish of Halifax…
You might recall this image from the 5 Mystery Photos post: I explained in the follow-up that this unusual buggy was from the settlement at Enon Valley, Pennsylvania. I had been wanting to visit this settlement for some time and had a chance to do so in early December, but due to time constraints, weather and darkness it wasn’t quite what I had hoped it…
“My way of thinking is keeping it in the centre is the right path. One extreme is as bad as the other.” That’s Amishman Chris Hershberger, in a new CBC story on the Amish in Manitoba. This summer reader Urs Christen shared a look at the first Amish community in the province. Manitoba had just become the fourth Canadian province with an Amish population, joining…
We’ve looked at the 12 Southern, 5 Western, and 4 Northeastern states with Amish populations. Finally, today we review the 11 Midwestern states with Amish communities. The Midwest as a region has a higher percentage of its states with Amish populations (11 of 12) than any other. In some sense it is both the “US heartland” and “Amish heartland”. Three of the four most Amish-populous…
Continuing our series on regional Amish populations (if you missed them, read more on Amish in the South and West), today we look at the Northeast. In this region of nine states, we find two of the most significant “Amish states” – and two with quite small, but growing, populations. Is the Northeast, in general, an attractive area for the Amish to live? Going by…
The Amish community in Brownington, Vermont, remains the state’s only settlement, but VT might soon be seeing a second community. The Brownington settlement was started in 2015, though as this article at vtdigger.org reveals, Amish expressed interest in the area even ten years ago, writing to a local realtor about available land. More information on this settlement emerges in another piece at Valley News. They…
Following our look at the 12 Southern states with Amish communities, today we look to the traditionally least-populated-by-Amish region, the West. As Steven Nolt describes in A History of the Amish, Amish arrived in America in two main waves, first settling primarily in Pennsylvania, and later in the Midwest. Over their history on multiple occasions Amish have felt the pull of the West…but for various…
Did you know that the South has more states with an Amish population than any other region? First, there’s the question of what defines a region. The South of today is a vast, diverse place. But I think it’s safe to say some states seem more traditionally “southern” than others. For instance, is South Carolina more southern than, say, Maryland? Other states sort of fit…