Amish History

The Jacob Hochstetler story is one well-known in Amish circles, as an example of one Amish man’s steadfast faith and commitment to Anabaptist principles of nonresistance. Hochstetler lost his wife and two children in a brutal wartime attack – but refused to defend himself or to allow his sons to use force against the attackers, in keeping with his deeply-held faith. Your Ohio News is…

I was informed yesterday that David Luthy had passed away earlier in the morning. Among other things, David was an Amish historian, founder and maintainer of the Heritage Historical Library, and an editor and contributor to Family Life, one of the most well-known and influential publications in the Amish and Plain Anabaptist world. Personally, he was one of the people who, through his writings, helped…

The Delaware News Journal is running a great collection of vintage photos of Amish life (link at bottom) in Lancaster County, PA and in the Dover, Delaware community. These photos date back decades and all are in black-and-white. I’ve pulled a few samples to share with you, but you’ll find all of them at the link at the end of this post. It’s always neat…

By the end of 2024, the number of Amish communities, known as settlements, will likely exceed 700. As recently as 1999, that number was slightly less than 300. The phenomenal growth of Amish settlements is nearly as rapid as the growth of its population. Although settlement growth is remarkable, there is the other side of Amish history – the settlements that did not make it….

What was Amish life like 65 years ago? Last week I came across a documentary called, simply, “The Old Order Amish”.  This was filmed in Lancaster County and was just recently uploaded to YouTube. It’s on the Periscope Films channel, a company that preserves rare and obscure old films. It’s a fascinating nugget from the past and I recommend watching (it’s viewable at the end…

Visit the larger tourist-friendly Amish communities, and you’ll find the label “Pennsylvania Dutch” or just “Dutch”, and variations of it, everywhere. Amish use the term as well, for instance in the names of their businesses, or in nicknames. But where does this term come from? When you hear “Dutch” in a vacuum, the Netherlands (or Holland) invariably come to mind. And some accounts mistakenly have…

An Amish community was founded at Rector, Arkansas back in 2009. Though it managed to attract a number of families (including a minister), it never grew very large, and eventually went extinct about five years later. Despite their rapid growth and many new communities being founded yearly, this happens to some Amish settlements – for various reasons. Don Burke paid a visit to the Rector…

Amish no longer live in Europe, but how are they remembered there today? Romain Speisser shares one example from a hometown of Jakob Ammann. Amman lived in the area of Saint-Marie-aux-Mines (once known as Markirch) for years until Anabaptists were expelled from the region in 1712. Today, it hosts an annual event commemorating its Amish history, as Romain describes below. As every year since 1995,…