48 Fun Facts About Amish

The Amish are named for which Anabaptist leader, whose followers split from the Swiss Mennonites in 1693?

Jakob Ammann, a Swiss-born elder, split the church in 1693 by demanding stricter discipline, down to untrimmed beards and plain dress for his followers.

The Anabaptist movement from which the Amish emerged began in 1525 in which Swiss city?

Conrad Grebel and George Blaurock performed the first adult rebaptisms in Zürich in January 1525, breaking with the city council's official Reformation.

Which hymnbook, first printed in 1564, do the Amish sing from in worship?

The Ausbund grew from hymns written by Anabaptists held in the dungeons of Passau castle in the 1530s, and Amish congregations still sing from it today.

What do the Amish call the set of church rules that governs dress, technology and daily life?

The Ordnung is each church district's mostly unwritten code covering dress, buggies and permitted technology; what it allows differs noticeably from district to district.

Which war brought a 1757 raid on the Amish at Northkill?

The French and Indian War: when raiders struck the Hochstetler farm, the father forbade his sons to shoot back, holding to Amish non-resistance, and three of the family were killed.

Mid-19th-century Amish immigrants settled mostly in Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and which Canadian province?

Ontario drew Amish settlers from the 1820s; most of the 19th-century arrivals across North America later joined less conservative Amish Mennonite groups.

As of 2025, roughly how many Amish live in the United States?

About 400,000: the 2025 estimate was roughly 405,000 in more than 30 states, and it keeps climbing because about 85 percent of Amish children choose to join the church.

The Amish population doubles roughly how often?

Every 20 years or so: families average five or more children and about 85 percent of the young join the church, so the community grows with almost no converts.

What do the Amish generally call non-Amish people?

The Amish call all outsiders 'English', whatever their ethnicity, because the world beyond the church speaks English rather than the dialect used at home.

Which language, a form of German, do most Old Order Amish speak at home?

Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German with roots in the Palatinate; despite its name it has nothing to do with the Netherlands.

In the Amish church, adult baptism is a requirement for which other step in life?

Marriage: both partners must be baptised members before an Amish wedding, one reason most young people choose to join the church by their early twenties.

What do the Amish call the period from around age 16 when youth experience the outside world before baptism?

Rumspringa means 'running around' in the Amish dialect; elders see it mainly as a time for courtship, whatever the popular image of teenage rebellion.

How often do Old Order Amish hold worship services?

Amish districts meet every other Sunday, rotating among members' homes and barns; the off-Sunday is spent visiting family or attending another district's service.

What does an Amish church district do when it outgrows members' homes?

It divides in two: with no church building to move into, a district is kept to about 20 to 40 households so that everyone still fits into one home for worship.

How are Amish bishops, ministers and deacons chosen?

Ordination is by a mix of election and drawing lots: members nominate, then each nominee picks a hymnal, one holding a slip of paper, following the apostles' choice of Matthias.

Old Order Amish children typically finish formal schooling after which grade?

Amish children finish school after the eighth grade, usually in their own one-room schools; further learning is practical, at home, on the farm or in the shop.

Which 1972 Supreme Court case put Amish religious freedom above compulsory high-school education?

In Wisconsin v. Yoder, Jonas Yoder and two other fathers had been fined $5 each for keeping their 14- and 15-year-olds out of school; the Court ruled for them in 1972.

Old Order Amish men's coats and vests are fastened not with buttons but with what?

Hooks and eyes fasten men's coats and vests, a habit so marked that the Amish were once nicknamed the 'hook-and-eye people', while Mennonites were the 'button people'.

What is the Amish practice of social avoidance imposed on members who are excommunicated?

Shunning, or Meidung, cuts an excommunicated member off from normal business and social dealings with the church until they confess and are restored.

The Amish prize Gelassenheit, a German word they use to mean what?

Gelassenheit, roughly 'yieldedness' or submission to God's will, underlies Amish humility, plain dress and the reluctance to draw attention to oneself.

As of 2020, in which Ohio county were the Amish nearly half of all residents, the highest share anywhere?

Holmes County was about 48 percent Amish in 2020, up from 42 percent in 2010, and the community has made tourism one of the mainstays of the local economy.

As of 2024, the world's largest single Amish settlement was centred on which Pennsylvania county?

Lancaster County's settlement, begun around 1760, is the oldest still going; its grey-topped buggies now mark daughter communities in several other states.

The Amish are formally exempt from which US government programme, having a religious objection to it?

Self-employed Amish have been exempt from Social Security since 1965, and Amish employees of Amish employers since 1988; they neither pay in nor draw benefits, relying on mutual aid instead.

Which Amish subgroup, unlike the Old Order, drives cars and worships in the local language?

Beachy Amish trace to a 1927 split in Pennsylvania under Bishop Moses Beachy; they went on to accept cars and electricity, and now worship in meetinghouses.

Which habit did the New Order Amish ban when they formed?

Smoking tobacco was banned and courtship rules were tightened: the New Order wanted a stricter moral code while keeping the horse and buggy.

Which ultra-conservative Amish affiliation emerged in Ohio during World War I?

The Swartzentruber Amish split from other Old Order churches between 1913 and 1917; among the strictest groups, they refuse even the orange safety triangle most Amish hang on their buggies.

Which genetic term explains why rare inherited disorders are unusually common among the Amish?

The founder effect: most Amish descend from a small group of 18th-century immigrants, so rare recessive alleles those settlers carried are far commoner among them than in the wider population.

In Witness, the Amish boy Samuel sees a murder in which city's railway station?

Young Samuel Lapp witnesses the killing of an undercover officer in a restroom at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, which draws detective John Book into hiding on the Lapp farm.

Which Australian director made the 1985 Amish thriller Witness?

Peter Weir could not shoot on a real Amish farm: families turned down Paramount's money, and Pennsylvania later agreed to discourage film-makers from making the Amish their subject.

After the 2006 Nickel Mines school shooting, the Amish response drew attention for what?

Its forgiveness of the gunman drew worldwide attention: Amish neighbours comforted the killer's family within hours, and dozens of them attended his funeral.

Shoofly pie, a favourite of Amish country, is made primarily with which sweet ingredient?

Molasses, under a crumb topping of flour, brown sugar and shortening, gives shoofly pie its sticky filling; the name is popularly said to come from shooing flies away from it.

Which chocolate treat, a Pennsylvania Amish tradition, is called a gob around Pittsburgh?

Whoopie pie: 'gob' is the western Pennsylvania name for it, and Maine, which also claims the treat, made it the official state treat in 2011.

Which colonial founder's promise of religious freedom drew the first Amish settlers to his American colony?

William Penn had been jailed in England for his own Quaker beliefs, and his colony's open door drew Swiss and German Anabaptists through the 18th century.

In a tradition shown in the film Witness, Amish neighbours gather to build what in a single day?

A barn: at a raising, hundreds of volunteers put up the frame and roof in one day, the best-known example of the mutual aid the Amish rely on instead of insurance.

Many Old Order Amish keep which device out of the home, using it from a small outdoor shanty instead?

A telephone: the shanty lets families make business and emergency calls without a phone in the house interrupting family life.

Which reformer's circle in Switzerland gave rise to the Anabaptist movement?

Huldrych Zwingli's younger associates, led by Conrad Grebel, broke with him over infant baptism in 1525 and became the Swiss Brethren, ancestors of both the Amish and the Mennonites.

Where do retired Amish grandparents typically live?

The Amish have no retirement homes: grandparents move into a small second house on the family farm, the Grossdaadi Haus, built beside or onto the main farmhouse.

Amish traditionally travel by horse and buggy and reject which utility for their homes?

Power-line electricity is refused because a grid connection ties the home to the outside world; many Amish instead run tools and lamps on batteries, propane, compressed air or diesel generators.

Which Coolio hit did 'Weird Al' Yankovic rework in 1996 into a song about plain Amish living?

'Amish Paradise' reworks Gangsta's Paradise, Coolio's 1995 Billboard number one from Dangerous Minds; Coolio objected at the time but later called his refusal a mistake.

In its first season in 2012, TLC's Breaking Amish followed five young Anabaptists as they moved to which city?

New York: four Amish and one Mennonite left home for the city, though scholars of Amish life have called the series largely fictional.

Pinecraft, a popular winter getaway for Amish and Mennonites, is in which Florida county?

Sarasota County: Pinecraft began as a tourist camp in the 1920s, and each winter long-distance buses bring Amish and Mennonite visitors from the Midwest and Pennsylvania.

Amish friendship bread is made from what, passed between friends like a chain letter?

A sourdough starter, fed with flour, sugar and milk over ten days, is divided so that one portion is baked and the others are handed to friends with the recipe.

Which Midwestern Amish-country town, home of the Menno-Hof museum, is named after a Potawatomi chief?

Shipshewana: the chief and his band were forced west in the 1830s, but he was later allowed to return and died in 1841 on the land that now carries his name.

The widely debunked 2012 reality series Amish Mafia aired on which network?

Discovery aired Amish Mafia from 2012 to 2015, following 'Lebanon Levi' Stoltzfus; scholars, local papers and police all said the protection racket it depicted was a fiction staged for entertainment.

In WWII, Amish men assigned to Civilian Public Service mostly worked in what?

Civilian Public Service put conscientious objectors into forestry and hospitals; hospital postings brought young Amish men into contact with the wider world, and some never joined the church.

Twice a year, Amish districts hold a council meeting to reaffirm their church rules before which service?

Communion, held each spring and autumn, goes ahead only when the whole district is at peace, so members first confess faults and reaffirm the rules at council.

As of June 2025, which state had the third-largest Amish population after Pennsylvania and Ohio?

Indiana's roughly 67,000 Amish in 2025 ranked third; unlike most Amish, the Swiss Amish around Berne speak a Swiss German dialect and drive only open buggies.

The Clinic for Special Children, founded in Pennsylvania in 1989, found treatments for which once-fatal disorder?

Maple syrup urine disease, a recessive disorder unusually common among Pennsylvania's Old Order Mennonites, became manageable through the clinic's early diagnosis and diet.