Blog No 46 The Amish in Holmes County
The Amish are usually associated with Pennsylvania and it’s true the first settlement of Amish in the US dates back to 1730’s in Berks County, PA. However, there are also large settlements of Amish in Ohio and Indiana, and other mid-western States. The largest settlement of the Amish in the world is in Holmes County, Ohio where a majority of its residents are Amish or Mennonite.
In September 2022, my daughter, Megan, my brother, Alvin, and I visited the Amish Mennonite Heritage Center in Holmes County in search of my articles that had been printed in The Budget, the largest weekly newspaper for the Amish and Mennonites. I needed these pieces for my memoir that I had written after I had visited my parents in Belize in late 1960’s, soon after they had moved to Belize from Arkansas. At the heritage center we viewed Behalt a 265-foot canvas cyclorama that illustrates 2000 years of the descendants of the Anabaptists (Amish, Mennonite, Hutterite and others.) Included in the mural is a depiction of the Jacob Hochstetler Massacre in Berks County, PA in 1757. Native-American warriors allied with the French attacked the Hochstetler family and set their cabin on fire, scalped and killed a son, a daughter and their mother. Two sons had loaded their rifles in defense but the elder Hochstetler prevented them from fighting based on the Amish Mennonite doctrine of non-resistance. Some of the men were taken as prisoners and held for years but eventually released.
On our way we made a stop at the Ohio Paw Paw Festival where there was much in the way of festivities but sadly, a scarcity of paw paws. We visited our nephew, Mark Stoll and his family and spent a few days touring the settlement. New to us was the Amish using solar battery-powered bicycles that were now accepted in the majority of the churches but not all of them. The argument for their use was that the energy for the solar bicycles came from the Sun instead of the electrical grid. We enjoyed walking along country roads, ate at an Amish restaurant, and visited a farmer's market operated by the Amish.
