Don Burke today shares photos from a little visit to the Belle Rive/Opdyke, Illinois Amish community, taken last autumn. This is a small community in southern Illinois (Jefferson County), two church districts in size. As a state, Illinois ranks #10 in its total Amish population, which is dominated by the large Arthur settlement. Don gives you a tour around the settlement below. You can also think of it…
We’ve had a number of looks at off-the-beaten path Amish communities lately, from the new settlement in northeastern Vermont to the Garnett, Kansas community to the Unity settlement in Maine. Today, reader Jerry takes us to another in that category–a community tucked away in an unusual valley in the southwestern end of Virginia. The following is Jerry’s account of his trip to the Burke’s Garden…
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…