It’s been over 18 months since Sam Mullet was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the beard-cutting attacks carried out on Amish in Ohio in late 2011. Others in Mullet’s group, including those who actually did the cutting, got sentences ranging from one to seven years. Donald Kraybill’s new book Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz…
What do you know about the Amish of Geauga County, Ohio, the fourth-largest Amish community? Over 15,000 Amish live here. Yet the settlement kind of gets overlooked, especially with Holmes County so close. Among the buggies, windmills, and laundry lines of Geauga County, you’ll find something not often seen in other communities: the classic ice vending freezer. A friend who recently visited Geauga describes there being “hundreds” of them “all over the…
The Watertown Daily Times has published comments from the father of the two girls abducted last week in upstate New York. Mose Miller has 14 children, and is one of the Heuvelton community‘s bishops. In an interview with Johnson Newspapers in their Heuvelton home on Sunday, the girls’ father — Mose Miller, 44 — said he feels “sorry” for the suspects. “It’s sad,” Mr. Miller said. “They…
Local news outlets are reporting that two Amish girls in upstate New York have been abducted while tending their family’s produce stand (Note: since the girls have now been found, the Amber Alert info, artist’s sketch, news station videos, and the girls’ names, originally included with this post, have been removed). The St. Lawrence County Sheriff’s office has activated the Amber Alert for New York state. The thing you…
Now is a great time to get produce from Amish stands. David Arment of Arment Photography has ten photos today featuring various foods in Amish country, and the signs which advertise it. About half of these are produce, and half we can just call “other”. I’m not sure all of them are from Amish businesses, but most are. Which shot do you like best? What…
MacGyver used to be one of my favorite television programs. If you don’t know the show, Angus MacGyver was the secret agent-science whiz famous for using his quick wits to escape precarious situations. Each episode featured MacGyver working his wizardry to get out of yet another jam, using only his inventive powers and whatever resources were at hand. As an operative for the fictional Phoenix Foundation, MacGyver was constantly thwarting bad…
One of our readers, Anne, has a son named Ed (not his real name) who became Amish a few years ago. We hear from Anne from time to time in this ongoing series called “When a son joins the Amish”. Anne has previously written about the photo policy when she visits her son, a hard winter, her friends’ reaction to her son’s conversion, and dental problems. Anne recently…
The Arthur Amish community occupies a special place with me. This was where I first really got to know something about Amish people. As an outsider who knew nothing about them, I never intended to “study the Amish”. I could scarcely have had any idea where things might lead when I knocked on that first Amish farmhouse door ten years ago. As I tell in the foreword of…
Following our look at a $9,681 Amish buggy, we’ve got an excerpt from Richard Stevick’s Growing Up Amish: The Rumspringa Years which explores the topic of Amish youth and their horsepowered vehicles. In this selection taken from Chapter Seven (“Singings: The First Step to Independence”), we learn about the many ways the Youngie adorn their buggies (including one surprising modification I had never heard of before, see…
Last year, Sam Mullet received 15 years for his role in beard and hair cutting attacks on Amish in eastern Ohio. But 15 others got lesser terms, ranging from a year and a day to seven years. The first of the Bergholz people have now done their time and returned home to eastern Ohio. A Reuters news piece details how two of the group, married couple Raymond and Kathryn Miller, spent…