Amish History

Cathedrals, Castles, and Caves: The Origins of the Anabaptist Faith is the new book by Marcus A. Yoder. Marcus serves as Executive Director of the Amish & Mennonite Heritage Center and the Ohio Amish Library. Marcus and I touched base last December when I dropped by the Center (this is where I took the photos of Amish women’s head coverings and Amish church clothing – it’s…

I came across some remarkable historical photos on the PBS American Experience site. I believe these were connected with the release of the documentary film “The Amish” in 2012, but I missed them the first time around. There are a total of 13 shots in the gallery which you can view in full, and in larger sizes, here. I pulled a few of my favorites…

You may have come across the term “Amish Mennonites” before. It popped up on the site here recently, in our post on the first Amish settlement in America. Both Jim Potter and Al in KY wondered, what does the term mean? You might see it in some accounts referring to a modernizing group which emerged in the latter 1800s, in contrast to what became the…

Where was the first Amish community in North America? Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is home to the oldest Amish settlement still around today. But it’s not the first place Amish settled on this side of the Atlantic. That distinction belongs to the Northkill settlement that existed in neighboring Berks County*. It was organized by 1740, predating today’s Lancaster settlement by about two decades. This historical marker,…

The photo you see below, of Iowa Amish schoolchildren fleeing into a cornfield, was taken in 1965 by Des Moines Register photographer Thomas DeFeo and republished nationwide. It’s credited with spurring national support for the Amish, leading to the landmark Wisconsin v. Yoder 1972 Supreme Court decision (effectively allowing Amish to limit schooling to eight grades). The accompanying video features a number of other fascinating images taken at the time of the…

In today’s post, Janneken Smucker discusses Fraktur, an art form once popular among the Pennsylvania German people. — Fraktur and Family Records Among the decorative items in some Amish homes—both today and in the past—have been ornamental family records, some stitched, some inked, some produced on painted glass (a unique genre that clearly deserves its own post!). These records mark marriages, births, and baptisms, and…

In today’s post, Janneken Smucker gives us a glimpse of the homes and quilts of “Church Amish” in Lancaster County, over 70 years ago. — Recently my research interests have expanded from Amish quilts to New Deal era photography. Luckily, there is a small group of photographs in which these two topics perfectly mesh: photographs Irving Rusinow took of Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, during the…

In today’s guest post, Suzanne Woods Fisher looks at the development of Amish plain dress, and the role played by Amish founder Jacob Amman. As Suzanne explains, Amman would have known something about clothing. — Why do the Amish dress the way they do? Simple clothing identifies the Plain People as set apart, as individuals belonging to a larger whole, the way a military uniform sets apart a soldier….

The Geauga Amish Historical Library recently opened in the heart of America’s fourth-largest Amish settlement, in the town of Middlefield, Ohio. John Gingerich is the only non-Amish member of the five-person board, which by default also makes him the library’s internet liaison. You might remember seeing John on this site a few years ago discussing his translation of History of the Bernese Anabaptists. John, who is of Amish…