Homeschooling is uncommon among the Amish. Why? Karen Johnson-Weiner suggests in her book Train Up A Child that it conflicts with the concept of community, so important to the Amish. But, some do homeschool. I know at least one Amish family who has. They happen to be members of a New Order Amish church. Amish Cook columnist Gloria Yoder also belongs to a New Order…
What is an “Ohio Nebraska” Amish home? It’s a home of a Nebraska Amish family located in Ohio. And who are the Nebraska Amish? This is a small group of traditionally quite conservative Amish, who originated in Pennsylvania. Am I making this sound more confusing than it actually is? Well, their name comes from the origin state of Yost H. Yoder, a bishop who helped…
So in addition to the 2021 statewide Amish population numbers which came out two weeks ago, we now have the updated list of individual Amish settlements for 2021. There are around 600 of them. You’ll find it at the Elizabethtown College Young Center Amish Studies website here. This guide provides the following information for each Amish settlement: the county (or census division, for Canadian settlements) main town or geographical…
Yesterday in LaGrange County, Indiana, a large group of Amish came together to help a neighbor in need. From WNDU 16 News: A group of about 100 Amish were out helping a friend move a huge pole barn. 16 News Now is told the person who owned the barn recently died, and the man who now runs this property has his arm in a sling…
A danger of depending on appliances and lighting powered by fuels such as propane and natural gas, as many Amish do, is the risk or fire and explosions. An Amish boy has lost his life due to what appears to be propane igniting and causing an explosion and fire in a home in Kentucky. Here’s what happened last week in an Amish home in the…
With the announcement in July of a guilty plea in the Linda Stoltzfoos murder case, it was expected that Justo Smoker would spend the rest of his life behind bars. Smoker admitted to kidnapping, killing, and burying the 18-year-old Amish girl. He received a sentence of 35.5 to 71 years for charges of third-degree murder, kidnapping, and misdemeanors. Unresolved at that time were the additional…
There was a nice article recently in the Epoch Times, a feature on the monthly publication Plain Values, which has become popular with both Amish and non-Amish alike. The publisher of the magazine is Marlin Miller, who grew up Amish. There are three main “pillars” the magazine focuses on – children with special needs, adoption, and “to highlight good works being done both at home…
I don’t know if it was just coincidence, but two stories on the Amish and e-bikes came out last week on the same day – one on Amish in Ohio, and the other on Iowa (that can’t be coincidence, I’m thinking). If you’re not familiar, e-bikes are bicycles fitted with an electric motor which provide additional power when riding to provide an easier ride and…
Based on the most recent Amish population figures, there are more than 380,000 Old Order Amish people living in over 630 settlements. Joe Donnermeyer has dug deep into the settlement data – particularly a separate set of data which he discusses below. Today Joe presents a list of Amish communities which cross state borders. In other words, communities having households in two neighboring states. Joe…
You may have heard the Amish described as a “separate people” or “in the world, but not of it“. These kinds of descriptions can make the Amish sound like they are simply apart from everyone else – isolated somehow from the rest of us. I think this is one thing that leads to the picture in some people’s minds of the Amish living in closed…