What’s it like to attend Amish church as an outsider? In previous posts, we followed Don and Pam Burke as they made their first trips to the Amish in Ohio and in Pennsylvania. In this third post in the series, Don and Pam take us along to a Lancaster County Amish church service*. If you’ve never attended an Amish church service, Don and Pam do…
There is a small but longstanding Amish community at Guthrie, Kentucky, right near the Tennessee border. Guthrie is one of the more atypical Amish settlements, as it is an “electric New Order” community. The Amish here permit electricity in the home, and also fully use tractors, even for road transportation. Still they are considered an Amish community, as they dress plain, use Pennsylvania Dutch, and…
It appears that the Lancaster County area will see a second controversial development come to fruition. Following the newly-approved satellite casino in Morgantown (technically in Berks County, on the edge of Lancaster’s Amish region), the Oregon Village housing development has been approved on a 3-2 vote by the Manheim Township Board of Commissioners. The development will bring over 500 new residential units to the rural…
Who to call when you need your building “hand-demolished”? To the general public, “Amish” often equates to handcrafted – meaning hand-milked cows, handmade quilts, hand-built furniture, and the like (whether that perception is always accurate is another question). And in that spirit, one Tennessee city found that an Amish hands-on approach was exactly what they needed to remove a historic structure. The Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle reports that…
We don’t often hear much on the Amish in Colorado, though there are a handful of Amish in the state, spread across four communities. But a recent snippet in the Conejos County Citizen brings word of the La Jara Amish settlement’s unusual plan…to build a meeting hall for community events: CONEJOS COUNTY — The La Jara Old Order Amish Church received permission for a needed structure…
Lancaster Online reports on an increasingly popular option for housing among Amish in Lancaster County: But as their numbers grow, more Amish want to live in a village, town or suburban development and have a small stable for a horse, just as the non-Amish have garages for cars. “It’s become a trend among the Amish community to live on these smaller residential lots as they…
Earlier this month, Don Burke gave us the story of how he first visited the Amish in Ohio, along with photos from that trip. We left off as he and his wife Pam were about to continue on — for a first visit to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. So let’s rejoin them now for the next portion of the journey… Don: As we ended the previous…
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While at the Amish Health & Well-Being Conference, I had a chance to catch up with my friend Mark Curtis. Mark joined the Amish at age 50 and has been a member of the church at Belle Center, Ohio for over 15 years. Some of you might remember Mark’s father Don, who for years commented on this site, often sharing insights on the Amish direct…
An Amishman was arrested for DUI in Kentucky after sideswiping a car with his buggy last week. The 34-year-old man was traveling with his wife and seven children, ages 9 months to 12 years old. He faces 10 felony counts as a result. The man first attempted to claim that one of his children was driving, but the children confirmed it was their father holding…
Looks like gambling will be coming to the doorstep of Lancaster County’s Amish region after all. Despite protests from residents, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board voted yesterday, unanimously, to approve a new casino project: Pennsylvania regulators on Wednesday approved Penn National Gaming’s proposed satellite casino in Berks County to attract gamblers from Philadelphia’s growing western suburbs, the first of five so-called mini-casinos licensed under a…