This is a neat video. Two Amish sisters from Charm, Ohio sing perhaps the best-known of all Christian hymns, “Amazing Grace“. This was filmed after a meal in an Amish home – probably a home business which welcomes in English guests. Why is one of the girls playing guitar? You might have thought that Amish don’t play musical instruments. Well, Amish don’t play them to…
With much of the country’s bricks-and-mortar economy shut down, e-commerce has been thriving. Ohio-based Lehman’s – specializing in off-the-grid and old-fashioned items – is one business that has seen its sales spike. The Wooster Daily Record looks at Lehman’s experience over the past couple months. Some products have been in especially high demand. So what are people buying? The first item mentioned doesn’t surprise me…
A tragic story out of Kentucky yesterday: BATH COUNTY, Ky. (AP) — Authorities in Kentucky say four children died, and one is missing, after a horse and buggy carrying an Amish family was swept away while trying to cross a low-water bridge over a flooded creek. Kentucky State Police say all six people were swept away when the buggy overturned in the muddy brown water…
Last week we looked at the histories of 5 common Amish family names – Beachy, Swartzentruber, Lapp, Hostetler, and Stoltzfus. Let’s pick back up this week with five more. I used your suggestions from last week’s post comments to put together this week’s list. If there are other names you’d like to see, let us know in the comments here. I’ll do at least one…
Lancaster County Amish churches decided to suspend worship services over a month ago. How will they resume them again? We find an outline of a plan in this article in the Mennonite World Review. The article is not just about the Amish. It gives a good overview on how various Plain Anabaptist churches have responded to the coronavirus situation (hat tip to Al in KY)….
“Kettle will not stay, neither will the windmill.” That was the stipulation attached to this unusual listing for an Amish home in the Seymour, Missouri community. This Amish home caught my eye for several reasons. For one, the community. Seymour is a plain settlement where many homes have a distinctive shingle-siding plain look to them (as we’ve seen documented in a recent post from Don…
A nice article appeared last week in the Maysville Ledger Independent, on the May’s Lick, Kentucky Amish settlement. In it we see a great example of a community helping out newcomers in a time of need. An Amish woman named SaraEtta Coblentz describes how several families from Indiana made the move to this corner of Kentucky in 2004. It sounds like they chose a good…
What kinds of natural remedies do Amish use? The book Plain & Happy Living: Amish Recipes & Remedies by Emma “Jonas Em” Byler covers many of them. It includes chapters like “General Tonics”, “The Herbal Medicine Chest”, and “Poultices, Plasters and Salves”. The more recent book Nature & The Environment in Amish Life also contains a chapter looking at herbal remedies and natural medicine use…
Members of the Lancaster County Amish community contacted police – after first meeting with church leaders – about alleged cases of sexual abuse in their midst. From Lancaster Online: In what appears to be the first such case of its kind in Lancaster County, an Amish bishop has been charged with failing to report suspected sexual abuse. Levi S. Esh Sr. 63, of Pequea, was…
Some years back I wrote a post on why Amish don’t discuss pregnancy: I never know when Amish friends have one on the way. I show up and there is another baby or one clearly about to happen. And even when it’s obvious, it never comes up, even as a mention. … You’d think it would be hard to contain the excitement. Yet I believe,…