An Amish Patchwork

Steven M. Nolt, Thomas J. Meyers

Description

A contemporary portrait of Indiana's Amish

Indiana is home to the world's third-largest Amish population. Indiana's 19 Old Order Amish and two Old Order Mennonite communities show a surprising diversity despite all that unites them as a distinct culture. This contemporary portrait of Indiana's Amish is the first book-length overview of Amish in the state. Thomas J. Meyers and Steven M. Nolt present an overview of the beliefs and values of the Amish, their migration history, and the differences between the state's two major Amish ethnic groups (Pennsylvania Dutch and Swiss). They also talk about Indiana's Old Order Mennonites, a group too often confused with the Amish. Meyers and Nolt situate the Amish in their Indiana context, noting an involvement with Indiana's industrial economy that may surprise some. They also treat Amish interaction with state government over private schooling and other matters, and the relationship of the Amish to their neighbors and the tourist industry. This valuable introduction to the Indiana Amish deserves a place on every Hoosier's bookshelf.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Who Are These People?
1. The Old Orders: In the World but Not of It
2. Moving to Indiana
3. Maintaining the Old Order
4. Amish Ethnicity: Pennsylvania Dutch and Swiss
5. Community and Family Life
6. Amish Schools
7. Amish Work: Farm, Factory, Carpentry, and Cottage Industry
8. The Amish and Their Neighbors
9. A Different Part of the Patchwork: Indiana's Old Order Mennonites
Afterword: The Patchwork in the Modern World

Notes
For Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Midwest
• Ethnic
• Philosophie et théologie
• Religión
• Medio Oeste de Estados Unidos
• Rural
• Mensajería instantánea
• Sociology
• Rural area
• Types of rural communities
• Ethnic group
• Midwestern United States
• Christianity
• United States
• History
• Middle West
• IN
• Campagne
• OH
• MI
• Amish

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 21 décembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253027719
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

an AMISH PATCHWORK
an AMISH PATCHWORK
Indiana’s Old Orders in the Modern World
Thomas J. Meyers and Steven M. Nolt
A publication of
Quarry Books
 
an imprint of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
 
http://iupress.indiana.edu
 
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© 2005 by Thomas J. Meyers and Steven M. Nolt
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
 
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
 
Manufactured in the United States of America
 
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
 
ISBN 0-253-34538-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-253-21755-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
 
1   2   3   4   5     10   09   08   07   06   05
To Carrie, Rachael, Anicka, Lydia, and Esther
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Who Are These People?
1. The Old Orders: In the World but Not of It
2. Moving to Indiana
3. Maintaining the Old Order
4. Amish Ethnicity: Pennsylvania Dutch and Swiss
5. Community and Family Life
6. Amish Schools
7. Amish Work: Farm, Factory, Carpentry, and Cottage Industry
8. The Amish and Their Neighbors
9. A Different Part of the Patchwork: Indiana’s Old Order Mennonites
Afterword: The Patchwork in the Modern World
Notes
For Further Reading
Index
Illustrations
Map of Old Order Amish settlements in Indiana
A traditional Amish farm
An Amish woman shopping near Goshen
An Amish settlement east of Paoli
An Amish home in Milroy
A meetinghouse in an Amish settlement southwest of Salem
An etching of the execution of Anneken Hendriks
The title page of the thirteenth edition of the Ausbund hymnal, first published in 1564
European-born Amish immigrants Henry and Magdalena Stahly
A mailbox in Wayne County displays the traditionally Pennsylvania Amish name Stoltzfus
Amish house and farm buildings in the Ohio Swartzentruber architectural style
An Amish “bench wagon” or “church wagon” in Allen County
A buggy reflecting the Nappanee Ordnung
The interior of an Elkhart County home illustrates the local district’s Ordnung
Sign southwest of Salem advertising a phone number, indicating relatively permissive telephone use
A farm in Adams County belonging to a Swiss Amish household
A Swiss-style unenclosed buggy in Steuben County
A Swiss-style buggy with a “kid box”
An Adams County Swiss Amish cemetery
A home constructed in 2002 in the Swiss Amish settlement east of Salem
Part of the Elkhart-LaGrange settlement reflecting the Amish suburbia phenomenon
A log home near the southern Indiana town of Vallonia
An Amish woman quilting in her home near Goshen
An Amish woman riding a bicycle in Topeka, for local errands
Students in an Amish school in Elkhart County
Indiana’s first Amish parochial school
Students at work in a typical Amish classroom
Amish children enjoying a game of baseball at recess
A large, five-room Allen County Amish school
A modest schoolhouse east of Paoli
A farmer near Middlebury works his fields with six draft horses
The farmers’ market in Parke County
The Deutsch Kase Haus cheese plant near Middlebury
An Amish man in the Elkhart-LaGrange settlement bikes to work
A retail store operated by Amish near Milroy
A public auction in Elkhart County
Amish and non-Amish neighbors come into contact in many commercial establishments
An Amish-themed establishment that is not owned by Amish
LaGrange County’s New Eden Care Center for women’s healthcare
A horse-drawn vehicle sign near Berne, posted along a public road to caution car and truck drivers
Old Order Mennonites near Wakarusa and Tippecanoe use horse-drawn transportation
A typical Old Order Mennonite buggy
Map of Old Order Mennonite settlements in Indiana
A wholesale produce auction near Wakarusa
One of three Elkhart County Old Order Mennonite meetinghouses
Old Order Mennonite boys
Acknowledgments
This book draws heavily on interviews, fieldwork, and archival research carried out as part of the “Amish and Old Order Groups of Indiana” project made possible by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The project was conducted under the auspices of the Mennonite Historical Library at Goshen College. We are grateful to the Lilly Endowment and to Mennonite Historical Library Director John D. Roth for their support and encouragement. We received helpful guidance during our research from an advisory group that met annually and included John A. Hostetler (1918–2001), Beulah Stauffer Hostetler, Donald B. Kraybill, and four Amish individuals.
During the course of our research we visited every Old Order settlement in Indiana as well as several communities in other states. We are deeply grateful to the dozens of Amish and Old Order Mennonite people who provided us with information and counsel in each place we visited, taking time out of their daily work, visiting with us in their homes, and sharing their ideas and observations. We met many wonderful people and made new friends.
We thank the Lilly Endowment and Goshen College for support in preparing this book manuscript. In addition, we express our gratitude to several Amish readers who critiqued the manuscript as we drafted it. Joel Fath and Dottie Kauffmann provided excellent photo illustrations. Finally, we wish to thank Indiana University Press editorial director Robert J. Sloan for assistance in bringing the volume to publication.
an AMISH PATCHWORK
INTRODUCTION
Who Are These People?
I n late November 2002, Elkhart County, Indiana, offcials attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a newly completed stretch of road. Following timeworn tradition, a county commissioner and the county sheriff joined other civic leaders in taking a symbolic first ride down the new road—only this time, they rode in an Amish buggy.
In fact, the new road was a half-mile gravel road accessible only to nonmotorized vehicles and designed to provide Amish travelers with a safer alternative to the busy highway nearby. The road, it turned out, was a joint public-private venture, and the Amish had contributed more than $13,000 toward county construction. The Amish were eager to see the road open since it allowed safer, easier access to one of their most frequent travel destinations: the local Wal-Mart shopping complex. 1
This story at once confirms and confounds popular stereotypes of the Amish. As expected, the Amish continue to cling to horse-and-buggy travel in the midst of a motorized world, even when preserving this practice demands expensive or in-novative alternative means, like a separate road. Yet the road itself—designed to promote their traditional form of transportation—takes its patrons to Wal-Mart, the epitome of modernity’s mass-market homogenization and dilution of local community. Clearly, the Amish are living apart from, and yet as a part of, the modern world.
While tourist advertisements, Hollywood movies, and popular fiction have helped promote and reinforce certain Amish images—isolated farms nestled amid neat rows of shocked corn, windmills pumping water for livestock, barefoot children working beside bonneted women and bearded men—these images of bucolic uniformity mask the real diversity that is also part of Amish life and hide the changes that mark these living communities.
On closer inspection, Old Order communities scattered across North America represent remarkable variety, and nowhere is that variety more evident than among Indiana’s Old Orders. Different patterns of migration and interaction with outsiders, diverse ethnic customs and folkways, varying economic opportunities and outlets—all shape local Old Order life in particular ways, yet within a framework that is identifiably Amish.
Like a patchwork quilt that combines different colors and shapes with a common thread, Old Order people share important convictions even as they dress differently, take up an assortment of jobs, and maintain their separation from the rest of the world in differing—and changing—ways.
Visible variation is most obvious. For example, while most Indiana Amish buggies are black and are enclosed, others are black but are not enclosed, and riders sit in the open air. Still others are enclosed but gray in color. Similarly, many Amish women’s head coverings are white, but some are black, and others are brown.
Other differences are less notable but perhaps more significant. Most Hoosier Amish speak a German dialect known as Pennsylvania Dutch, but others do not. The majority of Amish children attend private Amish schools, but some are enrolled in public schools with non-Amish teachers and classmates. And while some Amish families continue to farm, a growing majority do not—though alternatives to agriculture vary from at-home shops, to work in construction, to industrial factory employment.
Amidst this diversity, however, there are common convictions about faith and family, about the church and its relationship to surrounding society. If the Amish welcome some types of innovation, clearly they resist others, even at great cost. Understanding their beliefs and worldview can help make sense of the myriad differences while revealing the patterns that emerge amid the patchwork pieces. We invite you to examine along with us this Indiana patchwork that sews together remarkable diversity with similar threads.
The chapters that follow present an overview of the central themes and dive