Amish Love and Marriage

Weddings are happening right now in many Amish areas.  Amish weddings are joyous events but also social obligations.  With the interweaving web of family connections, and weddings often happening on the same day during wedding season, Amish families may have to juggle their schedules and make decisions on which to attend. Further complicating things is […]

Continue Reading Amish Wedding Season

It’s become something of a habit to share a few thoughts, comments, and links every couple weeks in what I call a “brain dump”.  It’s not as scary as it sounds: Reader Steve recently asked “Where are the Texas Amish?”  We don’t have a Texas Amish State Guide entry yet, but I can point you […]

Continue Reading Friday brain dump: Lone Star Amish, getting hitched, and an Illinois buggy “brew-thru”

Sunday is the day Amish youth groups gather, and when dating couples traditionally meet.  So I thought it would be a good day to share this. National Geographic is airing a new show called “Amish at the Altar”. They describe the show as: Three couples–two Amish and one ex-Amish–reveal courtship, engagement, and marriage among the […]

Continue Reading Amish Dating

I was just digging through my things and came across the pen above, picked up while visiting Amish communities earlier this year. This pen commemorates the wedding of Steven and Lydia, married this past spring in Ohio.  Keepsakes and souvenirs such as this memorialize Amish weddings in many communities. Remembrance items can range from pens […]

Continue Reading Amish Wedding Pens

In this final installment, Aaron Miller continues his discussion of choice in Amish society: Let me list some choices that I and other Amish people make in their daily lives. One of the first financial lessons I teach my boys goes like this. When we are about to attend a social function or community event […]

Continue Reading Boxers or Briefs? Aaron Miller on choice in Amish society (part two)

Perhaps no aspect of Amish society has received as much popular attention as the idea of “Rumspringa“.  Various media including books, TV and documentary film have addressed the youth period, also know as a time of “running around”.  Amishman Aaron Miller, who in the last installment discussed the Ordnung, addresses misconceptions and realities of Rumspringa: […]

Continue Reading Rumspringa-Myths and Reality

Elam quit shaving today. Amos’ brother was married last autumn during the traditional wedding season in Lancaster.  After spending much of the previous few months visiting relatives along with his new bride, today was finally the day to hang his hat under his own roof. Moving into one’s own home around here means that you […]

Continue Reading Moving day

With an average of around seven children, Amish families are hefty by modern standards. Farm families tend to be the biggest.  A dozen or more children is not rare. But the largest Amish family ever?  Read on to learn about one possibility: John Troyer, who lived near Kokomo, Indiana, had an unusually large family, perhaps […]

Continue Reading Largest Amish family ever?

“When I was a little boy, I often went away with my father–to town, to the neighbors, to the welding shop, to the engine shop–anywhere Dad needed to go.  As with all little boys and girls, going away was a treat to me, no matter where we went. “On one such ‘going away’ adventure, perhaps […]

Continue Reading Maids and old boys

Kevin at the Amish Cook blog has already posted on this issue but I found it so compelling I wanted to pass it along. This Wall Street Journal article examines the situation of a Pennsylvania Old Order Mennonite father of 11 children, 9 of whom suffer from rare, genetically-inherited medical ailments. The father, who in […]

Continue Reading First-cousin marriage and Old Order health issues