Amish America

Getting my kicks in Lancaster County, PA

Well, despite the inclement weather, I managed to get up to Lancaster County and to my friends 'Daniel' and 'Mary', where I'll be staying the next few days.  The last hour-and-a-half or so, from the PA line onward, was pretty hairy, as snow and ice accumulation made driving tricky. 

I pulled in late Tuesday night to Daniel's, happy and relieved to see the kitchen gas-lamp still burning.  Daniel sat at the table, playing with the youngest child, a 14-month old girl.  The rest of the tribe, save Mary, were already fast asleep. 

Daniel set me up in the basement, which sounds cold, but is probably the warmest spot in the house--that's where the coal oven resides.  Before hitting the hay, Daniel pointed out the large reserves of canned food the family had been going through that winter. 

Pickled cauliflower, beets, 'snitz', canned meat, and all sorts of home-grown treats lined a full wall of the basement.  Being February, a good chunk of the eatin' had been knocked out already, as evidenced by numerous empty Mason jars, but quite a bit remained.  Good, because I planned to be hungry.

Yesterday morning (Wednesday) my jobs were:  udder-cleaner and silage-sweeper.  I learned that some cows don't like me--or at least cows that haven't gotten a chance to know me, don't like me. 

More than a couple took kicks at my hands as I attempted to 'strip' them.

That sounds more exciting than it is--it's actually something like priming the pump, before the mechanical-suction milkers get put on.  A squeeze or two to get the milk going.  Or actually, I think it's more a pull.  Or maybe a combination of the two.  Daniel's son 'Tim' explained that cows are often a bit jumpy if they don't know you so well.  Well, I aim to make friends this week.  I will learn to strip you, cows.

Today I graduated to manure-sweeping duty, and also got to pass out food to all the hungry cows.  It was nice making them happy.  Some were impatient and tried to steal from the bin. 

While sweeping up manure, members of Daniel's family offered up encouragement.  'It's looking good Erik!', 'You're doing a good job!'  This significantly helped my self-esteem, and for that I am grateful.  If all else fails, at least I know I can sweep manure to a satisfactory level.

Daniel's 8-year-old son 'Elmer' and 12-year-old daughter 'Lizzie' then commandeered me to help out with their respective tasks, feeding the chickens and pigeons, and distributing milk-substitute to the calves. 

The youngest calf, a snow-white fellow just a week old, needed some encouragement.  We had to chase that little guy down and force his head into the bucket.  He really resisted, but once we got it in there, he gulped milk like that was what he'd really wanted to do all along.  Funny approach to eating.  Lizzie, who seems to make a pretty good boss, paid me with a Valentine's Kit-Kat bar after breakfast, saying I did a good job.

After some errands with Daniel, we headed back home and somehow I ended up plastered on the couch for an unplanned hour-and-a-half nap.  The 4am-and-up schedule takes a few days' getting used to.

On rising, I stumbled upstairs to find Mary and 'Bena', the oldest daughter, at work at the kitchen table.  Bena was writing a letter to a friend that had missed a social event the day before. 

Mary was busy at work with her prayer-covering.  She had earlier ironed it, and was now doing what she called petza--pinching, she explained.  This petza process, which requires a pick-like metal tool, apparently helps to maintain the Lancaster prayer-covering's distinctive heart-shape.

'This is probably something new for you,' said Mary.

'I've never worn one of those...yet,'  I replied.

Mary seemed to get a kick out of that. 

Swartzentruber to New Order: Donald Kraybill breaks down four Ohio Amish affiliations

One of my favorite pieces on the Amish is a Donald Kraybill deconstruction of the four main affiliations of Holmes County, Ohio.  This work does a great job of describing the cultural variety found within the Amish world.  Reading it one is reminded of the difficulty of making broad generalizations about Amish society.

The Amish in Holmes County follow a conservative-to-progressive arc that starts with the highly conservative Swartzentrubers, ratchets up a notch on the progressiveness scale with the Andy Weaver affiliated churches, moves into what you may call 'mainstream' Amish territory with the Old Order groups, by far outnumbering the other major affiliations, and closes out with the New Order, which are essentially a horse-and-buggy driving, plain-clothes wearing subset of the Old Order.  These are the four major affiliations and the arc they take (with a number of stops along the way), in the largest and arguably most diverse Anabaptist settlement in the world.

How do the groups compare?  A few excerpts from Kraybill's Plotting Social Change Across Four Affiliations, found in the compilation The Amish Struggle with Modernity:

Schooling:

'One minister estimates that about 75 percent of the New Order children and perhaps 20 percent of the Old Order children attend public schools, but very few if any of the Swartzentrubers do.'

Daylight Savings Time:

'The Amish have historically not adopted "fast" time (daylight saving time), preferring instead the traditional slow time.  This not only enforces Amish separation from the world, but also symbolizes their preference for a traditional pace that rejects what some Amish call "crazy time" and avoids "the rat race."  This measure of separation from the world is also eroding.  The Swartzentrubers, however, continue to reject "fast" time and the Andy Weaver group preaches against it and holds its church services on slow time, but as a result of their involvement in nonfarm work some members are following "fast" time.  The Old Orders and the New Orders, with their growing entanglements in the larger society, have for all practical purposes adopted "fast" time--even for their church services.'

Dress:

'Although the four groups embody distinctive Amish patterns, their costume reflects shrinking separation from the world as one moves toward the New Orders.  Near the progressive end of the continuum men's hair gets shorter, beards are trimmed tighter, hat brims shrink, bonnets get smaller, and brighter colors flourish.  The Swartzentrubers are more likely to go barefoot in the summer and their women to wear the high-top black shoes.  The Swartzentrubers prefer to use as little plastic as possible, forbidding plastic eyeglasses as well as rubber panties for babies.'

Related Posts:

Amish diversity in 'the two Lancaster Counties'

Amish diversity nationwide, and the 'approachability scale'

Daylight savings time and the northern Indiana Amish rat race

Blue doors, brown buggies: The Amish of New Wilmington, PA

'In 1847, nine families, all Bylers, moved to Lawrence, PA, they were:  Solomon, Christian, Yost, Daniel, Noah, John, Reuben, Rudy, and Eli, and were among the first Amish in that section.

In year 1880 bishop Crist (Christian) Byler walked from Lawrence County to the Valley.  He traveled a distance of 250 miles in 4 days at the age of 68.  He also made the trip once since.  There were quite a few who walked out and back after the Lawrence County Settlement established allowing 5 or 6 days for the journey.'

The Valley that Eli J. Byler writes of here is the Kishacoquillas Valley, also known as the 'Big Valley', of Mifflin County, PA, home to Nebraska Amish, Renno Amish, Byler Amish and a host of higher-order Amish and Mennonite groups. 

The Amish surrounding New Wilmington, a quaint college town in northern Lawrence County, about 60 miles north of Pittsburgh, have a few customs not commonly seen elsewhere in Amish America.  One is their use of reddish-brown-topped buggies, which Byler describes as 'yellow-top'.  He writes that the Byler Church of Mifflin County also uses yellow-top carriages, as do a few other settlements that have split off from the New Wilmington group.

The Amish here seem to be pretty big on the color blue.  Nearly every house-door is painted a light sky-blue.  I also noticed stairs leading to a front porch, and the door of a milkhouse painted in the same shade.  A woman I asked ascribed this practice to tradition.

   

The New Wilmington Amish tend to stick with shades of blue when it comes to their shirts and dresses as well--navy, sky, royal, turquoise.  I got to visit on wash day. 

This community is perhaps the eleventh or twelfth largest of all Amish settlements.  The 2003 Church Directory gives the following statistics:

Families: 439 more or less   

Widowers:  6

Widows:  28

Children:  1220

Total Population:  around 1693      19 couples moved out

People I spoke with in this settlement mentioned trips to, family in, and business connections with the Lancaster settlement.  I didn't have a chance to ask, but there's a decent chance they'd be back-and-forth with Amish in Mifflin County as well.  Farming and sawmill work seem to be two of the most common occupations, as well as other types of woodworking and carpentry.

(Quote Source:  Pennsylvania Amish Directory of the Lawrence County Settlement, 2003.)

The peculiar 'White' Jonas Stutzman

Sitting on the lawn around the firepit last week with some Amish friends, talk turned to 'White' Jonas Stutzman, who once lived just a few miles away.  Stutzman was one of the first Amish settlers in Holmes County.  He was also one of the oddest.

photo:  behalt.com

'White' Jonas is portrayed in a local attraction, Behalt--a huge cycloramic painting of Anabaptist history, done about fifteen years ago by a Catholic German artist.  The pioneer Amishman got his nickname from a habit of only wearing white clothing, a result of one of his visions. 

Stutzman had some odd ideas.

One of them was his prophecy of Christ's return.  Steven Nolt in A History of the Amish explains that Stutzman published a booklet announcing his revelations and warning all to repent, for church leaders to stop observing communion, and to purify themselves for the Lord's arrival, which Stutzman claimed would occur in 1853.

The booklet was published in English rather than German.  Nolt speculates that this was done in order to communicate with a wider audience. 

Stutzman even prepared a wooden chair for Christ's return.  It sits in the center of the cyclorama room.  Since we should always 'hold Christ above us', Stutzman made the chair larger than an ordinary one.  As picture-taking is not allowed inside the cyclorama, the friendly folks at Behalt removed it to the lobby so that I could get a photo.

My Amish friend also claimed that Stutzman had an aversion to wheels.  Checking with the helpful people at Behalt seemed to confirm this.  A Mennonite lady who's worked there many years felt that it may have had something to do with a Biblical connection of wheeled travel with chariots of war. 

Wherever he got the idea, apparently it held even after his passing.  Upon death, Stutzman was carried miles rather than being carted to his final resting place.

She also wanted me to understand that besides being an eccentric, Stutzman played a part in easing differences among the Amish.  When local progressives wanted a meetinghouse, Stutzman donated land for them to build one.  The land is still in this particular church's possession, though the old building has been torn down and a new one built. 

Nolt summarizes:  'Although the Amish rejected Stutzmann's apocalyptic teaching, he remained a member of his church all his life, and most of his children joined the Old Order Amish...Said one Amish historian, "His peculiar views and dress were not seen as a threat to anyone, for he never had any followers."  His unusual life grew out of honest conviction, not a spirit of rebellion.'

(Source:  Steven M. Nolt's A History of the Amish, Revised and Updated).

Three Lancaster observations

After three weeks in the county, three more observations from Lancaster:

Hair--men's hairstyles here seem to range from the very short and close cropped to the much more Swartzentruber-esque bob.  Women's hair is arranged a bit differently than midwestern Amish curled in tightly at the sides--almost too tight--but more on that later.

Mennonites--the Old Order Mennonite population is significant here, with many 'buggy Mennonites' populating the northeastern chunk of the county.  The Amish tend to be found most heavily in the center, eastern and southeastern parts of the county, though church districts can be found spread out to the north and west, and with quite a few in neighboring Chester County.  Amish buggies here are grey, Mennonite ones black.  Another way to tell them apart:  Mennonite homes have bikes out front, while the Amish here only allow scooters.

One Amish farmer explained to me how the Amish and Old Order Mennonites cooperate on schooling, teaching their children together in the same one-room schoolhouses.  He described it as a bit of give-and-take between the two groups but that it generally worked well.

Accent--the typical Lancaster English accent is somewhat different than that of Holmes or Lagrange Counties, having a hollow, lilting ring to it--if that description makes any sense.  Again, as I talk to more and more Amish (conversations with Amish make up 95% of the speaking I do any given day), I find myself inadvertently mimicking it.

The Sugarcreek Budget

The Budget is a vital print lifeline stretching across the diverse Anabaptist settlements of North and South America.

Founded in 1890, this weekly paper out of Sugarcreek, Ohio, serves as an information exchange for families sometimes separated by great distances and formidable technological barriers.

Budget 'scribes' regularly report on local happenings.  Their writings are listed under the home settlement's geographical header. 

Many of the placenames indicate traditional Amish/Mennonite locales in Pennsylvania, Indiana, or Ohio.  A number, however, come from further afield, distant lands such as Belize, Haiti, or Romania, likely originating from more adventurous Mennonite or Beachy Amish settlers.

Besides the local news, you can also find all sorts of neat things for sale in the Budget--wind-up watches, cloth diapers, and something called a 'no-crack' freezer container, to name a few. 

Ads in the Budget tell you where to get your 'superior cow cream' or even Himalayan Goji Juice, two items no doubt favored by Plain folk concerned for both their own and their animals' health.

Service providers advertise as well--again, many of them health-related.  Perusing a recent issue you'd come across info on hernia relief, Tijuana dentistry, and even the frightening-sounding colon hydrotherapy.

How's the weather in those parts?

Poems, children's sketches, and petitions for contributions for needy members enduring misfortune also feature prominently in the 40+ page gazette.

But on to the meat of it:  in the Budget, readers learn of all sorts of happy occurrences:  marriages and births and successful moves and good crop yields, to mention a few of the most popular topics.

The Budget conveys tragedy as well.  Readers of a recent issue learned of an Indiana organic-farm poultry barn burning down, resulting in the loss of 17,000 young fryers, and much worse--a young Amish father of six who died suddenly of a burst appendix in the same community.


And finally, the Budget brings readers the seemingly mundane:  A big chunk of letters begin something like 'spring is here and the weather is fine....', 'church was held at the Miller place...', 'the flowers are in bloom...' and don't really seem to say too much else. 

My old man happened to pick up an issue, and joked about how 'nothing' really seems to happen in most of the letters.  He wondered, just when do they find the time to write about the corn growing? 

I supposed that it might be what they do when they're not on the internet or in front of the tube.

And maybe that's just us taking a short view of it...with the weather playing such a prominent role in the agrarian-minded Amish-Mennonite world, it might come to mean the difference between prosperity and destitution.  At least it has in the past.

In any case, the Budget is a vital publication, anticipated and enjoyed by many in the far-flung Amish-Mennonite community.

It's a modern-day relic in a modern world of internet, cell phones and email, a throwback 'messaging system' for a 'peculiar people', of whom many still choose to rely on the printed word for basic news and communication.

Follicle facts

photo:  Randall Persing

Amish women let their hair grow from birth.

If you ever catch an Amish female with her hair down, the sheer length of it can be surprising. 

In fact, with locks often reaching well past waist-length, the typical Amish  head-covering seems to somehow bend the laws of physics.  Where is their room for it all up there?

A quick diversion:  A follicle produces about 20 hairs over a lifetime.  The typical hair will grow to around two or three feet in length before falling out.  But the ultimate 'max-length' depends on the individual.  The world length record-holder is a Chinese woman by the name of Xie Quiping.  Seems she last cut her 18-foot-plus mane in 1973.

When an outsider comes around, the covering-less Amish woman usually acts a bit embarrassed, and jets off to grab it.

The official basis for the 'scissors-shall-not-touch-these-locks' edict, as for much of Amish custom, is Biblical.

photo:  Bill Coleman

And what about the guys?  Dads and moms shear their boys with Germanic efficiency, sitting them down outside on the porch or on a chair, lining them up and running them through. 

Wives do husbands likewise.  There are a couple of different styles popular among males.  The no-nonsense dutch-boy/bowl is one, while others like to keep the hair trimmed clean off the forehead, bang-less.

Swartzentruber and more conservative Amish wear the colonial 'William-Penn' cut, with much longer sides covering the ears.

Amish proscriptions on hair may be biblically-based, but the implications are wholly practical.  With no trips to the salon, perms, trims, dye jobs, extensions and the like, just think of how much more cash that adds up to over a lifetime.   

Especially when you might be talking a dozen (or more) hairy heads in a family.

Any color you like...

photo:  Randall Persing
'You can have any color you like, as long as it's black'.   So said Henry Ford, perhaps mythically, about his quintessential Model T auto.

If you're an Amish woman, have any color you like, as long as it's solid.

Non-patterned dress is one thing that sets Amish women apart from other Plain peoples, such as Old Order Mennonites, Old Colony Mennonites, and Hutterites.

Most Amish women make their own dresses, buying fabric from local dry goods shops.


This is what typical Old Colony Mennonite clothing looks like:

photo: Jordi Busque 

Old Order Mennonites often use plaid patterns.

And polka-dots have a prominent place in the headscarves of Hutterite dress:

So you want to join the Amish

One thing that sets the Amish apart from many Mennonite groups, and for that matter most other religious bodies:  they don't recruit.

Amish typically neither condemn nor encourage attempts to join.  They may seem a bit discouraging towards the idea.  If the subject comes up, usually you hear something like 'if you don't grow up Amish, it's really hard to do it.' 

Occasionally, you run into an Amish person with a name that just doesn't 'sound' Amish.  That's often a clue.

It frequently happens that non-Amish who join stick it out for a little while but leave when the novelty wears off.

I've only met a very few that have joined, and that's out of literally (literally literally) thousands of families met while selling books in their communities.

I regret not having a chance to get down to the nitty-gritty about it with the joiners (What's it like?  No, what's it really like?  What do you miss most?).

One was a teacher.  Another works in a factory.  A third, fairly fresh convert raises and sells mums.  He supposedly fell for an Amish lass while on a visit to the community. 

Asking another 'native' Amishman in his community about the newbie, I was told, almost wink-wink jokingly, that he seems to be doing alright (so far), as if the underlying idea was 'is he gonna make it?' 

But this guy, and the other people around him were supportive as far as I could tell.  In fact, the outsiders who have joined and 'survived' seem to garner a bit of extra respect.

Apparently, one way it works for interested parties is that you first come to live and get put to work for a certain length of time, just to see if you can hack it on that end.

Then there are the teachings and language to pick up.  Amish adolescents readying themselves for baptism normally attend prep courses led by church ministers.   

One New Order couple I met had adopted five non-Amish children.  They found a Pennsylvania Dutch tutor to teach the kids the native tongue.  I suppose that would come in handy for non-Dutch adult converts as well. 

Some converts are from similar-minded faiths such as this Mennonite -background fellow, which may make it easier, but others come from different branches of Christianity.

The teacher-convert was apparently originally Catholic, as was well-known Amish historian David Luthy, whom I often mention in this blog. 

Apparently this teacher-convert said he found living without a car to be the most difficult.  That's not surprising.  For me, I think car and electric would be the hardest.  Clothing, hairstyle, hard physical work I'm pretty sure I could swing.

But that might be looking at it the wrong way.  One Amishman has suggested that seekers approaching the Amish solely through the lifestyle angle--the buggies-and-beards rustic appeal of it--are missing the point.   

The whole idea is not to live in a strange cultural world for it's own sake.   By itself, that gets you nowhere.  Rather it's all about living what the Amish feel is most important:  the words and teachings of Jesus Christ. 

The Old School

The Nebraska Amish find themselves on the ultraconservative edge of Amish society.

'Nebraska' is something of a misnomer, however.  This group is found mainly in Mifflin County, PA, in the diverse 'Big Valley' region. 

The Nebraska tag comes from the origin of the group's founding bishop, Yost H. Yoder.

John Hostetler's Amish Society describes some defining cultural characteristics for the Nebraska group.

Men wear 'William Penn'-style shoulder-length hair, no suspenders or belts, and brown denim pants and vests.

Women wear black head kerchiefs (bonnets are taboo), flat Alsatian-peasant-inspired hats for field work, and the longest dresses of all Amishwomen. 

Lawnmowers, window screens, carpets and curtains are off limits.

Hostetler explains that Nebraska barns go unpainted, as do most of the homes.

An old world practice followed by the Nebraskans, also known as the 'Old School' Amish, is the funeral custom of sweet bread, wine, and cheese. 

Finally, the most easily visible defining characteristic of the group is the transportation.  The Nebraska Amish drive the conspicuous 'white-top' buggies, a perennial favorite of Amish photographers.

View some great photos of a Nebraska wedding at Bill Coleman's site.