A link (no longer online) to some nice photos of Anabaptist-related peoples in South America, by Jordi Busque. Jordi says that the family in An Amish family in the jungle moved to Bolivia from Tennessee in the mid-1990’s. Apparently they identify themselves as Amish. Jordi adds that there is another family like them, about an hour’s walk away. Is this family in fellowship with any…
The Amish and drugs–it’s another one of those things that grab our attention because it seems so out-of-place. Recall the media reaction to two young Amish men busted for dealing coke among Lancaster Amish “gangs” (ie, youth groups) in 1998. But following up yesterday’s post, it’s worth remembering that ‘heavy’, as the Lagrange meth problem was described, may be relative. Meth has clearly been a…
The body of ex-Amishman Eli Stutzman – convicted of one murder, suspected in four others – lies in a Texas morgue, unclaimed by his former Ohio Amish community. Stutzman’s DNA may be the case-breaker in the 1985 deaths of two Colorado men. Gregg Olsen, author of Abandoned Prayers, commented on the case which has hounded him for the past 20 years. Olsen shares an interesting…
Horse sales draw big crowds among the Amish. Draft horses such as Belgians and Percherons are the monsters of the horse world. These two breeds power the Amish farm. They haul, they plow, they bring the corn in every autumn. The sight of four, six, or even eight drafts hitched up at one time, deftly handled by an Amish farmer or a teenage son (or…
‘The typical English guy looks at one of us and just sees an Amish person. Actually there can be a lot of difference.’ So said a Holmes County Amishman, commenting on the diversity in his area. Compared to the Old Order Amish, the so-called New Order Amish are a curious mix–one which we might term technologically more liberal, but in some ways culturally more conservative….
Amish have been among the many helping clean up in southern Florida following last year’s devastating Hurricane Wilma. Amish Disaster Service out of Illinois has coordinated the Amish side of the effort. Volunteers from New York, Iowa, and Illinois Amish communities have been trekking back and forth to the area since early January. The Amish have just been one part of a much larger effort…
The Amish often seek medical treatment across the border. Cost is the main reason why. Lacking health insurance as the Amish do, treatment in the US can be expensive. A new law requiring passports, complete with identifying photos, could stop trips to Canada and Mexico. The photo part is the problem. Most Amish avoid posing for photos. The group has usually been able to negotiate…
The stories are heartbreaking. You feel for the victims. It’s hard to imagine what they’ve been through. But at the same time, a 20/20 piece on Amish abuse from a few years back points to the generalizations that many journalists rely on to tell their story. The 20/20 folks lean heavily on cliches and misconceptions–from the ominous opening music, to the overplayed stories they trot…
Eli Stutzman, convicted murderer and father of ‘Little Boy Blue’, was an exile from the ultraconservative Swartzentruber Amish group. When you read words like ‘secretive’, ‘closed’, and ‘backward’ in the same sentence as ‘Amish’, the writer, rightly or wrongly, is often referring to this sect. Wayne County, Ohio, where Stutzman originated, has a high number of Swartzentruber members, with quite a few spilling over into…
Convicted murderer Eli Stutzman, formerly of the Amish of Wayne County, Ohio, has died. His death has been ruled a suicide. The father of “Little Boy Blue”, suspected in three other deaths in addition to that of his son, killed himself in a Fort Worth, Texas apartment last week. Gregg Olsen, who chronicled the case in Abandoned Prayers, says the story might not be over. “I…