Amish Culture

An Amish School Guidelines Booklet

An Amish School Guidelines Booklet

ByErik Wesner
24 Comments

In more turbulent times, Amish parents have been fined, pressured, and even arrested, all in defense of their preferred manner of schooling. The Wisconsin v. Yoder decision of 1972 helped preserve Amish control over classroom education, leading to hundreds of Amish schools across North America. Regulations and Guidelines for Amish Parochial Schools of Indiana shows how seriously Amish take their hard-won schooling privileges today. The booklet, seen below in…

100 Amish Shovel Snow in Blizzard-hit Buffalo

ByErik Wesner
4 Comments

A couple of readers have sent along a link to a short news clip about Amish aiding residents of a mobile home park in Buffalo. As you can see in the video below (unavailable), photos show Amishmen hard at work on the roofs of residents’ homes (I assume this past Friday or Saturday). Buffalo, of course, was hit by a once-in-a-generation snowstorm last week, dumping…

How Richard Stevick met the Amish

ByErik Wesner
20 Comments

A lot of you know Richard Stevick from his book Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years, or through comments he has posted on various articles on this site. I’m happy to share that starting today, Rich is going to be writing for us here from time to time. In his first post (below), Rich discusses how he came to know the Amish, a journey that…

Debbie the Amish Taxi Driver

ByErik Wesner
59 Comments

Family Life came in the mail today, and as I was flipping through its pages, one article in particular caught my eye. An Amish taxi driver (that is, an English person who drives Amish people) named Debbie gives a short account of her experiences for this month’s issue. Unlike a lot of the fictional or loosely-based-in-reality teaching tales in the publication, this account is described as “a true story, by…

An Amish Birth Congratulations Card

ByErik Wesner
12 Comments

Besides Christmas, how often do you give someone a card? Amish have been known to send all types of cards, including sympathy cards, Christmas cards, and Valentine’s cards. That also leaves aside the practice of letter-writing, which flourishes in many Amish homes (and while on the subject, we can’t forget the clever way some Amish create envelopes). One happy occasion perfect for card-sending is the arrival of a baby. Our…

Who Makes Amish Scooters?

Who Makes Amish Scooters?

ByErik Wesner
18 Comments

I think we can include the classic Amish kick scooter as one of those icons of the Amish, along with the horse-and-buggy, hand-stitched quilt, straw hat, and so on. Even though many Amish don’t really use scooters (e.g. Amish in a lot of Midwestern communities), they are closely connected with the Amish in Lancaster County, where they’re visible everywhere. And with Lancaster Amish the most…

Katie Troyer’s Pinecraft

Katie Troyer’s Pinecraft

ByErik Wesner
21 Comments

“Maybe one each season says ‘don’t take any pictures’”. That’s friend of the blog Katie Troyer answering a question she’s no doubt heard before. You can see Katie and hear her discuss her passion in a new video (below). You may have enjoyed Katie’s photos at various places on the web (and even offline – I have a calendar featuring her work on my wall at home)….

Geauga County Amish: The Ice is Nice

ByErik Wesner
12 Comments

What do you know about the Amish of Geauga County, Ohio, the fourth-largest Amish community? Over 15,000 Amish live here. Yet the settlement kind of gets overlooked, especially with Holmes County so close. Among the buggies, windmills, and laundry lines of Geauga County, you’ll find something not often seen in other communities: the classic ice vending freezer. A friend who recently visited Geauga describes there being “hundreds” of them “all over the…

Building A New Amish School (9 Photos)

Building A New Amish School (9 Photos)

ByErik Wesner
18 Comments

The scenes below come from the Adams County, Indiana Amish settlement, from the recent building of a new school.   You’ll see two structures in the photos below.  The school is actually the foundation you see in the bottom two photos. The wooden structure the men are working on is a barn for the school. The slab on the right hand side of the bottom…

Bench Wagon Graffiti

ByErik Wesner
14 Comments

When I saw “graffiti” in the title of the email, I imagined spray-painted epithets, possibly the work of ne’er-do-wells with an axe to grind against the Amish. By the looks of things, the etchings in these photos from contributor ShipshewanaIndiana appear to be the work of young boys, perhaps killing time after a church service. I can’t quite make everything out in the images–in the first…