Amish America

Trading a pilot's license for a buggy: an Amish convert's story

Kudos to Matthew for the link to a story about a Geauga County, Ohio man who joined the Amish in 2000. 

David Rapinz adopted the lifestyle around a decade ago.  He met an Amish woman, Martha, who 'took a chance on him before his baptism', and later married her.  Rapinz found beards, horses, and the Pennsylvania Dutch language all a bit unwieldy at first, but looks to be getting on alright with all three these days.  Read more about him in this News-Herald article.

Geauga Buggies

One of the most intriguing parts of the article is a comment from Donald Kraybill, who claims that conversions tend to happen more in Ohio than in other places.  "Here in eastern Pennsylvania, in the large Lancaster settlement, I only know of two cases in the 20th century."       

Kraybill does not know why.  Anyone have any insights or just plain guesses?

Rapinz's story got me thinking about some of the joiners I've bumped into over the years.  Of all the Amish converts I've met or heard of, only two come to mind that came from a foreign country (not counting those from Canada or children adopted from Latin America). 

There is a fellow living in Indiana who joined the Amish after coming to America from Germany twenty-odd years ago.  Another, in Ohio, once called Great Britain home.

The Indiana fellow still speaks English with a strong German accent.  I imagine Pennsylvania Dutch wasn't as difficult for him to pick up, though.  Any readers know of any other modern-day converts from abroad?

Pennsylvania Dutch versus Amish

Creative Commons

Here in the heavily touristed areas of Lancaster County you see 'Dutch' or 'Amish' attached to just about anything with something to sell--'Jakey's Amish BBQ', 'Amish Paradise Homestays', 'Dutch Delights', etc.

Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish are often taken as synonyms, but they aren't exactly one and the same.

Pennsylvania Dutch refers to both the people that settled in William Penn's 'holy experiment' as well as the dialect they spoke and which some continue to speak today.  The people and the dialect are also known as Pennsylvania German.

Among the Pennsylvania Dutch were Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic faithful as well as Anabaptists.  The dialect had gone into decline by the start of the 20th century.
 
red:  20 counties with highest number of speakers
blue:  20 counties with highest proportion of speakers
purple:  counts as both red and blue
Gnu free documentation license

Today, few outside the Old Order Amish and Mennonite community speak the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect.  In some communities, there is a fear that even the Amish may be vulnerable to losing it, as English words intrude and younger generations rely increasingly on English.

Click to hear Amish and Mennonites speaking Pennsylvania Dutch!

Settlements that failed: Stuck in the Big Easy--with the original 'urban Amish'?

A small haphazard settlement of Amish apparently once existed in New Orleans.

David Luthy explains that migrant Amish in the 1800's often entered America from Europe by way of the Mississippi River port.

Sometimes it happened that an Amish family lacked the funds to continue upstream and onward to established settlements, often in Illinois.  Previous to 1850, stranded families formed a small and short-lived community in the city.

Information on the community is scant, but apparently bishops from midwestern settlements cared enough to make the long trip and minister to the congregation there.  Bishop Peter Naffziger even walked there on two occasions to care for the settlement's spiritual needs--apparently from his home in Ohio.

1849 New Orleans map from Louisiana State Museum
New Orleans, at the time, was nothing like it is today, of course.  However, it was a city in the true sense of the word, with an 1840's population around 100,000.  Most of the inhabitants were French-speaking, so Luthy speculates that the Amish, from Alsace and Lorraine in France, likely felt more at home here than they would have in other ports.

It seems that the few Amish that lived here, if they did not move onward after raising the necessary funds, eventually may have adopted urban ways, lost traditions and assimilated.

(Source:  David Luthy's The Amish in America: Settlements That Failed, 1840-1960.)

Old Colony Mennonite School

A few more photos from Jordi Busque, this time of an Old Colony Mennonite school Jordi visited while in Bolivia.

See more of Jordi's work here.

The amazing Amish church directory

I just picked up my 2002 Indiana Amish Directory for Elkhart, Lagrange, and Noble Counties, and flipped to a random page.

Here are the last names of the 40 households in the district I landed on, in order:   Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontrager, Bontreger, Bontreger, Eash, Gingerich, Hochstedler, Hostetler, Jones, Lambright, Lambright, Lambright, Lambright, Lambright, Lambright, Lehman, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Miller, Schlabach, Stutzman, Wagler, Whetstone, Wingard, Yoder, Yoder, Yoder, Yoder, Yoder. 


The church directory, which almost all Amish communities put out, is a fascinating thing.  All families in a district are listed, along with maps and background info, birthdates and the like. 

Comes in pretty handy when you have dozens of cousins in the neighborhood to keep track of, or when you're trying to get to your uncle's new place on the other side of the settlement. 

They also often include historical backgrounds, and church 'genealogies'.  This guide contains a diagram showing how the first congregation, starting in 1847, grew and split and then split and split again, becoming 114 by 2002 (likely nearer 130 today).

It's nice to see the Amish unafraid to use this info as a community-building tool, especially at a time when some of us non-Amish are loath to even give out our last names.

Directories are usually available for sale at local dry-goods shops.  Scholars, genealogists and historians find them extremely handy as well.

The Amish update these about every five or so years, so northern Indy is about due for a new one.  This is only the third largest Amish community, and it's over 600 pages long.

About the names:  Miller and Yoder, very common especially in the Midwest, are classic Amish surnames.  Miller is the most common of all Amish monikers, with this directory reporting a whopping 811 households with that last name at the time of printing.

Schlabach is seen spelled a few different ways (Slabach, Slabaugh, Slaubaugh), as are Bontrager (Bontreger, Borntreger, Borntrager), Hostetler (Hochstetler, Hochstedler), and Wingard (Wengerd). 

Waglers are mostly found in southern Indiana in the Swiss-background community located there, so this family likely has roots there.   Eash, like the similar Esh, as well as Gingerich, seem to be somewhat Anglicized forms of the more Germanic Oesch and Guengerich, more commonly seen among earlier Amish settlers to America. 

The un-Germanic-sounding Jones, Lambright, and Whetstone all come from later converts to the faith. 

Amish or Amana?

About 45 minutes south of Cedar Rapids you come to the Amish settlement at Kalona, Iowa, set among the lovely rolling hills of Johnson and Washington counties.  There are 8 or 9 church districts here, making it one of the largest settlements west of the Mississippi. 

In addition to traditional dairying, raising and milking goats has become especially popular in this settlement in recent years.  One young couple even milks sheep.

Backtrack a bit towards Cedar Rapids, go west on Highway 6 and you'll find the Amana colonies--founded by a group of people who, though having German roots, are completely unrelated to the Old Order Amish to the south. 

Well-meaning tourists sometimes mistake the two groups--German heritage, similar names and proximity to one another cause some confusion.

The Amanas once practiced a lifestyle of shared goods and group rules for dress, eating and social behavior, among other things.  However, they abandoned communalism as well as the quaint clothing long ago. 

The Amana church still exists, and a number of the old traditions remain. 

Read more about the differences between the Amanas and the Amish here.

One last point of note--you might have recognized the Amana name on any number of appliances produced by Amana refrigeration.