I’ve got some photos of the community at Daviess County, Indiana to share with you today. These were taken by a friend of mine and emailed to me several years ago. For whatever reason, at the time I didn’t get around to posting them. I wanted to share them because we have surprisingly relatively little on Daviess County on this site – and basically no…
There are well over 600 Amish settlements across North America, with new settlements being started at a rate of about one every 10 days. You may have even seen Amish start a new community near you recently – or you might sometime soon. At the same time, many Amish settlements have failed over the years. There are a number of reasons for this. A location…
An Amishman in Canada finds himself in an unusual and likely unique situation, serving as bishop for two Amish churches – one in New Brunswick province, and the other just across the border in the US, in Maine. That’s one of a number of interesting details in Gabriel Arsenault’s article “Understanding Amish Migrations to New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba” from the latest Journal…
I just came across a video of the Beeville, Texas Amish showing footage from around the community. The video is six years old. I am not sure how I missed it before. We’ve had a half dozen or so posts on this community over the years, including one by Kevin Williams with a video showing a few locations in the settlement. This latest video is…
This is part 2 of Peter Santenello’s visit to the Amish of Pinecraft (if you missed part 1, that’s here). It continues with the same uplifting feel as Peter walks around the community, meets lots of friendly Pinecrafters, and continues learning about this new-to-him people. In this part he catches a Bocce ball game, sits down with a family with Amish roots to learn about…
I mentioned this idea of Amish “supercounties” in a recent post. This is the term I came up with to describe counties containing a large number of individual Amish communities. For one reason or another, these are counties which have just drawn Amish to settle in them, repeatedly. An alternate term might be “Amish-friendly counties”. There is something about these counties that makes them attractive…
Since yesterday, several people have reached out to let me know about this new video (including one Amish friend). This is by YouTube filmmaker Peter Santenello (new to me), who makes videos about different cultures in the US and around the world. In this two-part series, Peter walks around Pinecraft speaking with Amish people, as someone knowing relatively little about the Amish. He is given…
How about some winter shots from the New Wilmington, Pennsylvania Amish community? This is one of my favorite Amish settlements, dating back to my first visit one autumn going on 15 years ago. While the sights I saw then were of hues that matched more closely to the distinct brown-topped buggies of the local Amish, the wintry images in these photos better reflect our current…
On the morning of Christmas Eve, I visited an Amish community in Summers County, West Virginia. This is near the Virginia border, about a half hour’s drive from the Pearisburg, VA settlement. The town is Forest Hill. The first place we came across was this double-business – Shady Hillside Variety Store and Kountry Crust Bakery. Inside: Keeping things toasty. On completing my purchase, I…
A nice article in the Boston Globe on how the Amish came to settle Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Some excerpts: “They wanted to see a particular place,” Maclure recalled. “I told them it was getting awful dark. Let’s wait until morning. They asked if they might camp in a field or barn.” They’d brought sleeping bags. Maclure wouldn’t hear of it. “I said, ‘No, you’re not…