Last week we learned the tragic story of Jonathan and Wilma Hochstetler, a Mennonite couple shot in a late-night robbery in Indianapolis, with Wilma losing her life. Jonathan happens to be a cousin to Amish Cook columnist Gloria Yoder – the oldest cousin of 47 on her father’s side, as she describes him. In this week’s column, Gloria gives more details on the shooting, Jonathan’s…
A quick look at a couple of communities in the more distant corners of Amish America. First, Bonnet Strings author Saloma Furlong gives an update on the Amish community near Brownington, Vermont via her blog. Vermont photos: Mike Dougherty/VTDigger Amish moved there in 2015, making Vermont the second New England state with a community. In 2018 there was talk of a second settlement possibly starting, but…
An Amish friend who saw the title of the post last week had this to say: “Plain Parade – what an oxymoron”. I think that is an astute observation. The quotation marks were meant to suggest the term be taken with a grain of salt. Especially, as noted in the original post, since the actual Amish participation seemed to be minimal. That said, he also…
There was kind of a quirky “Amish” story that emerged last week in France. Not being a French speaker, I have mainly heard of it secondhand from French readers of this site, who have kindly kept me informed. I wanted to share a brief guest post from Romain Speisser on the topic with you today, who you might recall last month shared a history of…
This is a pretty awful and senseless story which hit me for several reasons. This couple is Mennonite, apparently grew up in an Amish community, and probably still have a good number of family who are Amish (two photos of family in the article linked below appear to be Amish). Hochstetler family photo provided by Andrew Yutzy Here’s what happened, via the Indianapolis Star: Sam…
Earlier this week I let you know about the Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities (JPAC), a new open-source scholarly publication. But what about publications produced by the Amish? While scholarly journals provide a different and valuable perspective, it’s also nice to read writings direct from Amish writers. And there is a wide and growing range of such periodicals. Some of these are pretty well-known, while…
Several readers shared this somewhat surprising story with me. Here’s a video showing a parade in support of President Trump, which took place Saturday in and outside of Fredericksburg, Ohio: This is in the Holmes/Wayne County settlement. There were a reported 500 people who gathered in this small town lying just over the county border. If you watch the video, you’ll see it is a…
I’m happy to inform you that there is a new free online publication covering Amish and Plain Anabaptist topics which has just launched. One of the editors, Joseph Donnermeyer, has passed along the following to be shared with you: On September 18, the inaugural issue of the new online, free access journal – the Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities (JPAC) – was launched. JPAC is…
Following our first post on natural remedies which Amish use, here are five more. This time, they’re all sourced from Emma Byler’s book Plain & Happy Living: Amish Recipes & Remedies. I’m not promoting these as something you should use, though. I’m just sharing them as ones that caught my eye “for informational purposes”. Amish use a variety of approaches to health care, including conventional…
Some new info in the Linda Stoltzfoos disappearance case. Unsealed court documents have shown that kidnapping suspect Justo Smoker sent multiple messages to his brother Victor in a window of time beginning about 20 minutes after Linda was last seen. The detective who applied for the search warrant stated that the text messages “would be directly after Linda Stoltzfoos was kidnapped.” Via Lancaster Online: In…