Tennessee Amish

Amish in West Tennessee

Amish in West Tennessee

Today Brenda shares some photos that tie together a few of the topics we’ve covered lately, namely Amish business, buggy safety, and small communities.  The shots below are from the Amish settlement in Carroll County, Tennessee. Carroll County is in western Tennessee, about a 2-hour drive in either direction from Nashville or Memphis. The Amish community is located near the towns of Huntingdon and Bruceton…

Amish Laundry Day

Amish Laundry Day

Brenda shares some photos from Carroll County, Tennessee, taken on a recent laundry day. We’ve had a lot of posts on the Ethridge, TN Amish, but not much from the other communities in the Volunteer State. There are only a few other Amish in Tennessee, and they are quite small settlements, so nice to hear from a lesser-known corner of Amish America. On to the…

Ethridge, Tennessee Amish Map

Ethridge, Tennessee Amish Map

The Ethridge, Tennessee Amish community is the largest in the South. It’s a Swartzentruber Amish settlement founded in the 1940s. Today there are about 1,500 Amish living here. Typical of Swartzentruber settlements, it is a farming community supplemented by a lot of small shops and home enterprises. Amish commerce extends off the farm with some selling products off the back of the buggy in the…

10 Views of the Ethridge, Tennessee Amish

10 Views of the Ethridge, Tennessee Amish

Last year I visited the Ethridge, Tennesse Amish community.  I was surprised to find that Ethridge is the Amish mecca of the South. For being a conservative Swartzentruber community, the place is crawling with tourists (relatively speaking, of course.  Lancaster County, this ain’t). It’s also a charming place to visit.  It’s got a rural feel despite the oversized tour wagons rumbling about. I hope you…

Gassing up the buggy

The usual summer gas hikes have yet to materialize this year.  But when they do, we’ll all be thinking how good the Amish must have it, right?  This shot from the Ethridge, Tennessee community is a little reminder that Amish use fossil fuels too. It’s been a little light on blogging lately because I have been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work on the blog….

The Amish of Ethridge, Tennessee

The Amish of Ethridge, Tennessee

The Amish community at Ethridge is one of a handful in Tennessee, and at ten church districts, the largest Amish settlement in the South.  The Amish here are of the Swartzentruber “lineage”, meaning low levels of technology, numerous farms, and buggies lacking the Slow Moving Vehicle triangle.  Ethridge is unusual as a sizeable and long-established Southern community, with most Amish settlements in the South being…

Tennessee Amish Produce Auction

Here’s an interesting article on a produce auction in the largest Amish settlement in Tennessee (article no longer online).  The settlement of ten church districts at Ethridge, Tennessee, is a conservative Swartzentruber Amish affiliation. So it was interesting to see local Amish contributing to this article, as well as learn that the area has something called an Amish Welcome Center with maps of farmhouses in…

Amish growing like mushrooms after a rain shower

An AP story has just hit the wire on population growth among the Amish.  This coincides with the release of additional information on trends in Amish growth and migration from here at the Young Center. The Amish studies site now lists trend data for the 1992 to 2008 period as well as the 2007 to 2008 one-year trend. The most surprising statistic:  according to the…