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Updated: May 16, 2025
Even when one meets them in Michigan, Iowa or Minnesota, this name clings to them, and the form of social organization which they elaborated in Eastern Pennsylvania still persists. This social organization has varying characteristics. It is somewhat difficult to analyze the intricate windings and entanglements of doctrinal and practical belief in custom among the Mennonites, Amish and Dunkers.
A stranger in Lancaster County seeing an Amish family group might easily wonder if he had not been magically transported to some secluded spot of Europe, far from the beaten paths of modernity. But in the cosmopolitan population of Lancaster the Amish awakes a mere moment's interest to the majority of observers.
I mentioned to this aged man the feet-washing that I had attended, and told how Dr. , the bishop, had washed the feet of the other brethren. "Did he wash them all?" said my Amish acquaintance. "Yes, all that were assigned to him. How is it among you?" "They wash each other's, every two and two. If he washes them all, he puts himself in Christ's place. He says, 'Wash each other's feet."
Recently, I was in Lancaster, Penn., and passing through a market I was told by a resident that all the truck farming of the market for that city had come into the hands of the Amish, and my friend added, "If you go at an early hour to buy, and ask the price of certain vegetables, you will probably be told, 'We do not know the price yet; we will have to wait until all the farmers come in." That is, after two hundred and more years of living as farmers in this section of Pennsylvania, these sectarians maintain their community life, co-operate in the monopolizing of an industry, and in fixing the price of the monopolized product in the markets of a Pennsylvania city.
Such madness of speech, to ears accustomed to the carefully tempered converse of Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkards, was in itself a wickedness almost as great as the deed threatened. The family, from the father down to six-year-old Zephaniah, trembled to hear the awful words. "Ever dare to touch me again so long as we both live and I'll stab you dead!" Mrs. Getz shrieked.
"John Kettering," her clear, soft voice addressed the Amish president of the Board, adhering, in her use of his first name, to the mode of address of all the "plain" sects of the county, "have I your permission to speak to the Board?" "It wouldn't be no use." The president frowned and shook his head. "The wotes of this here Board can't be influenced. There's no use your wastin' any talk on us.
The great simplicity of the surroundings on this occasion may lead the reader to suppose that the congregation was poor. It was, however, composed in a great measure of some of the thriftiest farmers in one of the richest upland sections of the United States. Some time after attending this meeting I called upon an aged Amish man to converse with him upon their religious society, etc.
If a bit of envy steals into the heart of the little Amish girl who stands at the Square and sees a child in white organdie and pink sash tripping along with her feet in silk socks and white slippers, of what avail is it? The hold of family customs is strong among them and the world and its allurements and vanities are things to be left stringently alone.
The Amish are another branch of the Mennonites, and those among us are likewise descendants of Swiss refugees. They are the most primitive of the three divisions of the sect, preserving the use of the Dutch or German language not only in their religious meetings, but almost entirely in their own families.
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