There has been some discussion over whether an Amish community exists at Verdigre in Nebraska. Here’s what I wrote a year ago in the Nebraska Amish state guide: The Verdigre area (Knox County) was home to another Amish settlement founded by Amish from Michigan in 2003. The pioneer couple, Eddie and Mattie Petersheim, were profiled in a newspaper article shortly after arriving in Nebraska. The Petersheims sought…
The best known Amish community in Ohio is of course the huge Holmes County settlement, home to around 30,000 Amish. Next would be the Geauga County community, the fourth largest of all Amish settlements, with a little less than half the population of Holmes County. Those may be the most well known Ohio Amish locations, but there are many other Amish settlements scattered across the…
Texas is home to one small Amish community, near Beeville, county seat of Bee County. Reader Debbie shares photos and comments today following a visit to the community. Stacked up against the verdant lands of Lancaster or midwestern Amish communities this is hardscrabble territory, which the photos here reveal. About businesses, Debbie comments that “There is a main store at the beginning of the settlement….
The Harmony, Minnesota Amish community is the largest in the state. In the video below, a television station visits the community and interviews an Amishman named Dennis as well as a local tour guide. It’s a brief but enjoyable look at this conservative Swartzentruber settlement. I don’t recall a lot of cases in which Swartzentruber Amish appeared on camera. Dennis gives a nice interview here;…
Michigan’s Branch County is found on the southern end of the state, on the Indiana border. The two counties to its south are Lagrange County and Steuben County, Indiana, both with an Amish presence, particularly heavy in Lagrange. Head west from Branch County and you’ll reach the Amish of St. Joseph County, Michigan’s largest settlement. Hillsdale County to the east has an Amish population, as…
The Ethridge, Tennessee Amish community is the largest in the South. It’s a Swartzentruber Amish settlement founded in the 1940s. Today there are well over 2,000 Amish living here. Typical of Swartzentruber settlements, it is a farming community supplemented by a lot of small shops and home enterprises. Amish commerce extends off the farm with some selling products off the back of the buggy in…
Today we have the latest installment in our regular 10 views feature. I took these photos last summer while in the Nappanee, Indiana Amish community. The town of Nappanee is at the center of a large Amish community of around 5,000 people, which stretches over 4 northern Indiana counties: Kosciusko, Elkhart, Marshall, and St. Joseph. Founded in the early 1840s, this community is one of…
We have another nice batch of photos today from Tom in NY, though I hesitated to post them at first. Not because they are controversial, but because the weather depicted in them is so different from what I have been enjoying the past few days–a perfect 70-75 degrees and sunny as anything. But in the end I’m hardly superstitious, so why not. Tom took these…
I compared statistics from the 2003 Amish Settlements Across America by David Luthy with numbers from the 2012 Raber’s Almanac to come up with a list of 5 fast-growing Amish settlements over the past decade. Past calculations have found the Amish population to double roughly every 18-20 years; these communities would be exceeding that, some by a significant margin. Why “fast-growing” and not “the fastest-growing”? There…
The area of Hicksville, Ohio (Defiance County, is home to an Amish community of just one congregation in size. What makes it interesting is that it is also quite old, being founded in 1914 (making it the 3rd or 4th-oldest Ohio Amish community). Amish settlements come and go. There are over 400 Amish communities today. But there have probably been 150+ which were founded and…