Just got a hot tip from the Young Center that the 2009 Amish population statistics are up at the Amish Studies web site. A couple quick things I noticed between this year’s and last year’s numbers: on the lower end, Arkansas has jumped from 1 to 3 settlements, and the Maine Amish, Montana Amish, and Kansas Amish have all added a settlement. Ohio, Pennsylvania, and…
From Lancaster, Pennsylvania, through Ohio and Indiana and on out to other long-established settlements in Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas, we tend to associate the Amish with the nation’s middle latitudes. Since their earliest years in America, the Amish have gravitated to the cooler climes of these corn and dairy regions. However, the Amish have also had a long history of attempting to settle America’s southern…
In the Amish world, when disaster strikes, you help your neighbor. Sometimes that means going two or three states away to clean up. And it’s not just Amish helping Amish–after all, in the grand scheme of things, you, English person, are a neighbor too. Amish often travel to help non-Amish rebuild after hurricanes, such as the Hugo storm in the early 90’s. Amish were active…