Amish America

Photos from the Martins in Poland

 

It's the 'long weekend' in Poland (a combination of the traditional May 1st communist worker's holiday and Poland's May 3 constitution day), and I've just paid another visit to my friends Jacob and Anita Martin, whom I've written about a few times on the blog.

The Martins, who've lived in Poland since 1993, struggled a bit at first, but have been able to build themselves a very basic but cozy home in a birch forest outside of Warsaw. 
 

Anita says that at first the home was not much more than a kitchen, with she and Jacob sleeping on one end and the kids on the other.  The Martins have gradually added on and now have quite a bit of square footage.

It was not until about five years ago that they got an indoor bathroom, but now enjoy a few small luxuries, including a nice-sized fridge and a washing machine.  Anita showed me her new stove, which she uses to bake bread.

The Martins live simply but happily.  They say they get along well with most of the neighbors, who are a mixture of Warsaw 'city people' and long-time locals.  Jacob has a reputation as a dependable worker with 'farm-smarts'.  He gets called out to deliver calves from time to time.
 
Little Krzysiek (Chris) spent most of our walk yesterday trying to feed my brother and I what he called 'chocolate'--dried-up chunks of mud found by the side of the lane.  This got the other kids worked up into a near riot.  'We want you to try it first,' we told the four-year-old, who adamantly refused.

The Martins originally came to Poland with the intention of starting a Beachy Amish congregation, but soon realized that it would be more difficult than they had hoped. 

Two of the original three families soon returned to the US.  Left alone, the Martins now attend a Pentecostal church in Warsaw.

Photos here are from late April and early March.

Click for more on the Beachy Amish from the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.

A weekend with the Martins

They live about as far back in as you can get, two miles down a mud road, deep in the heart of a serene pine-and-birch forest. 

The neighbors are mostly friendly, and Jacob has worked out a deal with one of them--a big-city transplant and a bit 'unhandy' when it comes to farming-- to manage and use a cow and some of his equipment.  It's not a bad deal at all--extra milk and tractor power for the family.

The Martin family maintains a little island of America in the Varsovian hinterlands.  When I walked in the front door on Saturday to greet Anita, as she leaned over the kitchen table processing the remains of a duck, I could feel it right off.   

As soon as Anita began speaking, I realized I knew the accent from somewhere.  I couldn't put a finger on it at the time, but later it was obvious.  It turns out Anita comes from a Knepp clan in southern Indiana.  Anita is warmer and less cautious when you first meet her, but Jacob soon warms as well.  He is quite talkative and a pleasure to listen to as he expounds on various topics.

So to get one of the most superficial matters out of the way, how 'Amish' are they?  Anita's family is based in an Indiana Beachy Amish congregation.  While Jacob was born in Pennsylvania, he soon moved away and spent his childhood and younger years in settlements in Tennessee and Kentucky.  And he has the drawl to show for it. 

Jacob calls his home congregation 'Amish Mennonite', but sees them as being basically aligned with Anita's Beachy group--or at least they were at the time.

Jacob's Polish is excellent.  Much better than mine.  Jacob has a talent for languages and is currently translating a Mennonite-authored book of inspirational stories into Polish.   He's about a third of the way through.  Over his nearly fifteen years in Poland, he's read many of the Polish classics--Sienkiewicz, Mickiewicz, who wrote the great epics, and others. 

Jacob's family left Pennsylvania German behind a couple generations before, he explained, as I sat and listened in one of his imported Amish-style hickory-rockers.  Anita used it growing up, says she understands it perfectly, but might have a tough time speaking it.  She says she used PA Dutch with the oldest kids for a spell, but abandoned it after a while since Jacob doesn't speak it himself. 

The kids are comfortable using both Polish and English, but the younger ones especially tend to gravitate towards English.  (By the way, re-reading my last post I realized I might have gotten a bit ahead of the game and added a kid to the Martins' total, which currently stands at seven, not eight.) 

Those little guys are a joy to be around, especially one and a half-year-old Stefan, and little four-year-old Krzysiek.  They are what the Poles might call rozrabiaczki--fun-loving little troublemakers. 

Jacob and Anita's first kids got classic American names--Ruben and Joshua--while later ones received Polish monikers--Ilona, Zofia, Waldek.  Jacob says they now follow the formula of a Polish first name and an English middle one--'Stefan James'--in case they ever return to the States.

There doesn't seem to be much likelihood of doing that now.  Things don't sit too well back home with the families.  The last visit was about three years ago--Anita's parents.  They are civil but fail to see eye-to-eye on various matters.

In any case, this is where home is now.  Jacob realizes that with all the media curiosity among Poles, he has a potentially very positive role to play here--one he didn't ask for, he chuckles, but one he will continue to take on. 

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.

Amish in the Jungle?

A link to some incredible photos of Anabaptist-related peoples in South America, by Jordi Busque.

Jordi says that the family in An Amish family in the jungle moved to Bolivia from Tennessee in the mid-90's.  Apparently they identify themselves as Amish, and Jordi adds that there is another family like them, about an hour's walk away.

Is this family in fellowship with any established Amish settlement?  Some aspects of clothing and appearance compare to Amish styles in the US, though some of the women's coverings are more reminiscent of other Anabaptist-related groups, and is the father wearing a moustache?  Hard to tell. 

A very interesting case.  Anyone with further info is invited to comment.

In Settlements that Failed, David Luthy describes the first Amish attempt at settling south of the border, a short-lived settlement near Nuevo Leon in Mexico in the 1920's. 

The next serious attempts came in the 60's, with small communities in Honduras and Paraguay. 

Over time, these groups disintegrated. 

Most of the Hondurans returned to the US in the late 70's.  The ones that stayed behind eventually joined the car-driving Beachy Amish.

Amishman Joseph Stoll detailed the travails of the Honduras group in his firsthand account, Sunshine and Shadow.
   

The remnants of the Paraguayan group, most of whom left for the US in the 70's as well, 'use no motor vehicles, worship in Spanish and English, and have built a meetinghouse.  They have no formal connection to the Amish' according to Steven Nolt in A History of the Amish.

            

Jordi also suggests checking out his photo-stories of Old Colony Mennonites in Bolivia.  Old Colony Mennonites form one of the largest 'plain' Anabaptist groups after the Amish. 

With roots reaching back to Mennonite groups in Russia, today they are mostly found in Mexico with related settlements in Canada and South America.  In matters of faith and lifestyle they are in many ways similar to the Amish, though as the photos show, their dress is decidedly different. 

Thanks Jordi, for sharing the great work.

31 Flavors of Amish

Most Amish look alike to the man on the street. In reality the group is surprisingly diverse. Though tied by a set of core beliefs, the Amish have no national governing body, no pope nor patriarch. The individual congregation, guided by its bishop, decides its own rules and customs. This decentralized approach, along with a widely varying tolerance for progressive ideas, creates many different ‘flavors’ of Amish. Within the 1200-plus congregations in North America you will find:

• Amish that use cell phones and electricity, and Amish that forbid indoor plumbing, toilets, and hot water in the home.

• Amish that practice 'bundling'--fully-clothed bed courtship--and those that forbid it.

• Amish 'ballers'.  Basketball is a popular sport, as is softball.  One Indiana Amishman built an indoor gym onto the side of his shop.

• Amish that smoke cigarettes and cigars.  The majority don't use tobacco, and the practice is generally on the decline.

• Amish that vote.  Most avoid politics, but up to 10% do participate in elections, usually local.  George Bush felt they could potentially tip Ohio and Pennsylvania to his side in 2004, prompting some unusual meetings with Amish church members.

• Amish sports fans.  Members in one equidistant central Illinois community split between the Bears and the Rams.

• All Amish use buggies--except for those that don't. The 'Beachy Amish', a group that splintered off in the 1920's, have accepted cars and other modern innovations.  For this reason they are often considered closer to the more moderate Mennonite groups.

• Buggy paint jobs differ--besides the most common color, black, there are gray, brown, white, and even yellow-colored buggies.  Non-black buggies are usually found within the various Pennsylvania settlements.   

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Congregations differ on beard length, lawnmowers, airplane travel, church-houses, Game Boys, and a host of other issues.  It seems the 'plain people', in many ways, are not so plain after all.

Most Amish look alike to the man on the street. In reality the group is surprisingly diverse. Though tied by a set of core beliefs, the Amish have no national governing body, no pope nor patriarch. The individual congregation, guided by its bishop, decides its own rules and customs. This decentralized approach, along with a widely varying tolerance for progressive ideas, creates many different ‘flavors’ of Amish. Within the 1200-plus congregations in North America you will find:

• Amish that use cell phones and electricity, and Amish that forbid indoor plumbing, toilets, and hot water in the home.