The new Amish population estimates are out for 2021 via the Young Center at Elizabethtown College. We’ll have some posts related to this coming up, including from Joe Donnermeyer of Ohio State University. In the meantime you can find the tables and map here. Some quick facts from the latest figures: The estimated total Amish population is 361,635 There are no new states, provinces or…
From the “Off-the-Amish-Beaten-Path Files” (not really a thing, but maybe it should be a thing): Reader Denise sends in a nice little account of an Amish store in a corner of Iowa. The community is Chariton, in Lucas County. I know little about it beyond what Denise shares, and what clues I can gather here and there. The Amish settlement list tells me this settlement…
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of an unusual (at least at the time) Amish settlement in Indiana. In December of 1991, two Amish families departed Lancaster County for their new home 700 miles away in the Hoosier State. New settlements were less common then than they are today, and Lancaster Amish had rarely moved outside the state to form new communities….
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…
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 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…