A recent story on Vermont Public Radio suggests Amish are starting a new community in Vermont, a state with no other Amish presence. From the article on the Orleans County town of Brownington: At the other end of the village, Amish families are starting to move from Pennsylvania into this unlikely melting pot in the Northeast Kingdom. And: As you weave your way through tree-lined dirt…
Did you know that a number of Amish call Maine home? Among the handful of settlements in the Pine Tree State are the Amish at Unity, Maine (Waldo County), an atypical group for several reasons. Everything I’ve heard about this community suggests it’s a nice little place with a few businesses and which seems to be quite friendly to outsiders (that of course is not what makes it unusual). All images…
Contributor Don Burke recently paid a visit to the small Amish community at Garnett, Kansas. He calls the piece below “Not Exactly What I Expected to See.” Sure enough, you’ll see Don found some things not too common in other Amish places. Don’s virtual visit to Garnett gives us a good example of how Amish practices can vary–sometimes quite significantly–in different communities and regions. — After a recent…
I paid a visit to Somerset County, Pennsylvania on my “way home” from last week’s stay in Lancaster County. I have “way home” in quotes here because it required a 3-hour detour west down the PA Turnpike in a snowstorm. But I was determined to get there. This had been a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time. Luckily road conditions weren’t slick,…
Amish people aren’t afraid to move, and do so for different reasons. One of the main reasons is in response to material progress–or “drift”, a word used by those who frown on too much change happening too quickly. The three Amish congregations at Yoder, Kansas, are rather progressive, permitting technology use other Amish do not, such as driving tractors as part-time road vehicles. An article in…
In “The Growth of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Communities in Kentucky” (see latest issue of JAPAS), Joseph Donnemeyer and Corey Anderson examine the development of Amish and other Anabaptist communities in the Bluegrass State. They also touch on Amish settlement (or lack thereof) in the southern states. I pulled some interesting points from the article to share with you below. Amish-Mennonites in Kentucky One thing to be aware…
Rich Stevick checks in from Pinecraft, where he and wife Pauline are reloading on vitamins C and D courtesy of the Florida sun and citrus. Today Rich shares excerpts from chapter 6 of Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years, giving us a glimpse of life in the “Plain People’s Paradise”. The Sarasota-area neighborhood is a popular destination for older folks, Amish youth, and vacationing families. But not…
As you might have heard, Amish are constantly starting new communities – about once every 2-3 weeks. But not every new Amish settlement makes it. Some attract dozens of families and last decades before dwindling to zero. Others muster just a few short years before economics, church struggles, or other factors send settlers on to new pastures, or back to the old. Don Burke recently visited a newly-extinct…
Suzanne Woods Fisher took a trip to the Amish community in Buchanan County, Iowa earlier this year. She shares that visit with us today–along with a few surprises she encountered. — The next time you have an occasion to travel to an off-the-beaten path Amish settlement, carve out a little extra time. Slow down and take a moment to look, really look, at the sprawling farmhouses that dot the two-lane…
The atypical Amish community at Pearisburg, Virginia (Giles County) has been described as “unique”. I’ve never been there, but we’ve heard a lot about Pearisburg–the oldest of Virginia’s half-dozen Amish settlements–from readers and contributors over the years. First, Rich Stevick has shared about this mountain settlement a few times. How about this unusual courtesy for non-Amish visitors: Several years ago at a wedding in Pearisburg, VA, we had the…