Amish in Europe

This is not an Amish buggy. Biking enthusiast and adventure blogger the Spokesrider has posted a few interesting photos from inside an Old Order Mennonite buggy shop in Indiana. Owner LeRoy Martin hails from the area of Indiana described in yesterday’s post on the Nappanee Amish.  His shop does have some Mennonite and Amish customers, […]

Continue Reading Old Order Mennonite buggy shop

I spent the day yesterday in Torun, home of Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus.  Poles come out strong for their national heroes and even after 500 years there is definitely a lot of local pride for this medieval mold-breaker, with statues, museums, and the university named for the famed herald of heliocentrism.  Torun, I have to […]

Continue Reading Nick Copernicus, Polish Mennonites, and an Entrepreneur magazine Amish business article

photo: Stanisław Ciok Flipping through a recent issue of the Polish news magazine ‘Polityka’, I had a chance to read an article about the Roma people, perhaps better known Stateside by the more colloquial ‘Gypsies’.  Entitled ‘Romofobia’, the piece describes the challenging situation of the 8 million-strong Roma minority living within Europe.  Poland, where I […]

Continue Reading Amish versus Roma

It’s the ‘long weekend’ in Poland (a combination of the traditional May 1st communist worker’s holiday and Poland’s May 3 constitution day), and I’ve just paid another visit to my friends Jacob and Anita Martin, whom I’ve written about a few times on the blog. The Martins, who’ve lived in Poland since 1993, struggled a […]

Continue Reading Photos from the Martins in Poland

They live about as far back in as you can get, two miles down a mud road, deep in the heart of a serene pine-and-birch forest.  The neighbors are mostly friendly, and Jacob has worked out a deal with one of them–a big-city transplant and a bit ‘unhandy’ when it comes to farming– to manage […]

Continue Reading A weekend with the Martins

Tomorrow I hit the road to pay a visit to Jacob and Anita Martin, an American couple that has been portrayed as Amish in the national media here in Poland.  The Martins have graciously allowed me and a group from Krakow’s Jagiellonian University to stay a couple days at their home in a village about […]

Continue Reading Dropping in on the ‘Polish Amish’

Just got a call from my friend here in Krakow.  It looks like Anita and Jakub, the ‘Amish in Poland’, are back in the news again. The Pennsylvania/Indiana-transplant couple, who settled in a village not far from Warsaw 14 years ago, appeared on the national talk show ‘Rozmowy w Toku’ (roughly, ‘Conversations in Progress’) tonight.  […]

Continue Reading The Amish in Poland, again

This one goes back a couple years, but really surprised me when i first found it.  An English-language Polish weekly, the Warsaw Voice, reported back in 2000 that a few families, apparently of an Amish or Mennonite persuasion, had settled in a village not far from the capital. The arrival of the families apparently caused […]

Continue Reading Amish in…Poland?

A small, accidental settlement of Amish apparently once existed in New Orleans. David Luthy explains that in the 1800s, many migrant Amish came to America from Europe by way of the Mississippi River port. Sometimes it happened that an Amish family lacked the funds to continue upstream and onward to established settlements, often in Illinois.  […]

Continue Reading Settlements That Failed: “Urban Amish” in New Orleans?

When selling books in Amish communities, I’m often asked if I carry the Martyrs Mirror. This book is very popular in Amish homes today.  It is an account of the numerous Anabaptists, spiritual predecessors of the Amish, who perished on account of their faith. It is also a hefty tome–at over 1100 pages there are […]

Continue Reading The Martyrs Mirror: How Amish forefathers chose to die