A news blurb about an accident in Lancaster County several days ago contained few details. An English friend of the family involved has just filled out the story. Three Amish sibling children were hit by a pickup truck while driving the buggy to church in Bart Township, at around 7:30 Sunday morning. Parents Dave and Liz King own the BBQ Barn at the Amish Farm…
Back one more time with another edition of five Amish surname histories. If you missed previous posts, you can find them here: Part 1 (Beachy, Swartzentruber, Lapp, Hostetler, Stoltzfus) Part 2 (Zook, Gingerich, Troyer, King, Lehman) Part 3 (Yoder, Schrock, Fisher, Stutzman, Wagler) These are excerpted from Joseph Stoll’s series “Amish and Mennonite Family Names,” which appeared in Family Life from December 1968 to March…
A video making the media rounds supposedly shows Amish singers in Minneapolis singing a hymn as they hold signs related to the death of George Floyd. The people in the clip were in several places described as “Amish” – possibly due to the label at least one YouTube uploader gave the video, and those writing the articles lacking familiarity with the Amish. But as awareness…
Marlene Miller joined the Amish at age 23, married and had ten children. She wrote about her life experience in Grace Called Me Home, later republished as Called to Be Amish: My Journey from Head Majorette to the Old Order. I just learned yesterday that Marlene passed away Saturday from cancer, at the age of 76. Longer-time readers might recall an interview with Marlene here…
I hadn’t heard the term “baby farm” before coming across it in this listing, and I’m not sure if the Amish would use it themselves (I doubt it). But that’s how this home, one of the seven Hillsboro, KY Amish homes for sale, is described. It looks like “baby farm” might just refer to its size – on a 21-acre parcel of land, it’s not…
Ira Wagler‘s best-selling 2011 memoir Growing Up Amish told the story of his life as a young man, and his eventual decision to leave the Amish behind. Broken Roads: Returning To My Amish Father is his just-released follow-up. It covers subsequent events in his life, and in particular, his relationship with his father, David L. Wagler. Among David’s accomplishments, he was co-founder of the Amish…
It’s just a little detail at the very end of this story, on Amish in Maine and coronavirus. But worth drawing attention to. This is the Unity community: They also added, they’ve been receiving Stimulus checks but they will not accept them and those will be returned to the Federal Government. The Amish don’t accept direct government aid as they like to maintain their independence…
This photo shows Amish people getting off an Amtrak train in Portland, Oregon. In states without Amish settlements (like Oregon), public transit stations are among the few places you’re likely to see Amish folks (here’s another example from Alabama). This shot, taken in 2011, captures a moment – perhaps we’re witnessing that happy relief at the end of a leg of a long trip. It’s…
“Modem” and “Log on” are my favorites. I came across this old Facebook post by Sol’s in Berlin, a store in the heart of Holmes County, sharing the “Amishman’s Guide to Computer Lingo“. I’m not sure who the original author is, but this appeared in the Vendor, a Plain community newspaper. It was passed on to Sol’s by one of their Amish employees: One of…
As we learned in last year’s post on 5 interesting facts about Lehman’s, the customer makeup of this simple products retailer is more English than Amish (by a factor of 4 to 1). And the product line reflects this to some extent. The company has a wide array of products fitting the “old-fashioned/off-grid” concept. But a decent chunk of them would not be typical for…