Amish folks, like the rest of us, enjoy hearing the odd bit of trivia or unusual fact. Hence, three tidbits of Amish trivia, taken from Brad Igou’s compilation The Amish in their Own Words: 1. Quilts. The Amish are well known for their proficiency in the quilting realm. Some of their pieces fetch upwards of $1000. The average quilt takes around 250-350 yards of thread. …
The Amish settlement at Piketon, Ohio was an odd one to begin with. A few things made the Amish who settled here in 1949 different from most. One was their evangelistic emphasis. Amish traditionally do not try to convert others. Piketon, Ohio was begun by a minister sympathetic to the idea of spreading Amish beliefs. Secondly, they were the first Amish congregation ever to publish…
You may have heard that the Amish have been accused of treating puppies poorly in what have been termed “puppy mills“. Amish businesses have thrived in recent years – though there has been some clashing with non-Amish society along the way. “Puppy mills”, Amish construction firms, and woodworking shops have all rubbed people the wrong way at times. “Puppy mills” is the term applied to…
The Amish often ignore daylight savings time. Tradition and symbolic separation from the world are often cited as reasons why. When attending church in Lancaster in the summer for example, Amish may refer to the 8 o’clock ‘slow time’ church start time, in other words, 9 am on DST. Church begins at the same time, the whole year round, regardless of what the clock says….
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….
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…