You may remember news last summer that researchers had conducted a nationwide Amish population survey.  I just had a chance to read an interesting paper detailing their findings.  Here are 5 of them: 1. New settlements On average a new settlement is founded every few weeks.  This rate has been increasing. From 1990-2000, a settlement was founded, on average, every 5.33 weeks.  2000-2010 saw this…
Ruth Anne writes: As a mother to a young woman who has Down syndrome I am curious as to how people with intellectual disabilities are accepted and integrated into the Amish culture. Â I live near Xenia, Ohio and I often see Amish people out and about shopping, visiting the doctor, etc., but I have never noticed an Amish person who has Down syndrome or any…
A version of a songbook used by Amish at Arthur, Illinois. Â This photo was sent in by a non-Amish reader; it contains the English translation beneath the German text. Some Amish use hymn books which are variations on the well-known Ausbund.
How do Amish people spend their free time? The Amish fill their leisure hours with a variety of activities, including: 1. Board games Tailor-made to winter days around the kitchen table. Â Scrabble, Settlers of Catan, Monopoly are among the favorites. 2. Hunting A male pastime. Â Occasionally females participate as well (more likely if you’re sister to, say, 8 older brothers). 3. Birding Hunting without the…
Pennsylania Amishman John Stoltzfus has agreed to answer some reader questions. Â Last week’s concerned Amish medical care and use of vaccinations. As before, John notes that he will take a general approach to his answers, keeping in mind that communities differ. Today’s question is on Amish migration: How do settlements get started? Is it just people from previous settlements moving and starting them in other…
In closing a recent post on Amish use of solar and wind power, I joked: Maybe one day we’ll observe Amish buggies rolling down the road, plastered with solar panels, or with whirling wind turbines planted on their roofs. The first part of that tongue-in-cheek prediction is actually closer to reality than one might think, at least for some Amish. A reader shares a photo of a solar…
Time for number 3 in our series of Amish vocabulary quizzes. Each of these words has some significance or relation to the Amish. I think this one may be slightly more difficult than the previous two quizzes, but we’ll see. 1. Charming Nancy 2. Inverter 3. Organdy 4. Jayco 5. Harmony 6. The Echo 7. Uffgevva 8. Rest Haven 9. Passau 10. Vorsinger
On this week’s buggy heater post, Don Curtis mentioned an unusual carriage which had appeared in his son’s Amish community in Ohio: He said that there is a family from Allen County, Indiana that has recently moved into the Belle Center community. They still drive an open two seater surrey. However, this winter they have placed a kind of enclosed cab over the back seat…
Pennsylvania Amishman John Stoltzfus has kindly agreed to answer some reader questions about the Amish. Of course “the Amish” includes different groups with different practices. With that in mind, John writes that “my views will not be the only view from our people, because of the vast geographic area of our communities, and because each community or settlement has its own Ordnung. I will try…
Fracking is slowly entering the Amish community at New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, located an hour north of Pittsburgh. The community lies above the Marcellus Shale, an underground rock formation stretching across a half-dozen states which contains vast supplies of natural gas. Fracking, in a nutshell, works by drilling into rock formations, and then injecting large amounts of water mixed with chemicals and sand to fracture the…