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Amish query

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  • Amish query

    Has anybody got any experience of tracing Amish people ?

    I've got quite an interesting story (well, to me). OH was teaching English to a class of 15 year olds here (Germany) & they were quite fascinated by an article about the Amish. So he did a project with them , which was a filmed story about life in an Amish community. One day they all piled into a few vans & found a quiet spot in the country where he filmed them "working in the fields etc"

    There was a feature in the local newspaper about this & a man in his 90s phoned us shortly afterwards to say that he thought we might be interested to know that there had been an Amish community in our area (very unusual...this is a 90% Catholic area). He said they had been ostracised....made to live & bury their dead outside the village....& they left in the 1820s, intending to go to the US. No ine in the area seemed to be interested...he'd given up trying to interest people.

    We asked him where exactly they had been & it turned out to be exactly where the filming had been done. They'd worked the same field & lived in the buildings opposite, which are still standing. We thought he must have seen the filming & somehow imagined it was real....but he was right....we've found the land rental agreements in the archives, together with the names of the Amish community. He said that someone had been from the University of Kiel in the 1960s to try & find out more, but had drawn a blank.

    I believe that the Amish in the USA today have pretty complete records of their communities from that time....has anyone got an address or tried approaching them ? If I can't find out anything from the Amish, I guess I'll have to look at the shipping lists for the names. It's quite possible (if not probable) that they never got to the US & then I don't think I'd have much of a hope of finding them.

    But I'd love to know what happened

  • #2
    Have a look at this on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancast...,_Pennsylvania
    You might get some clues as to how to make contact. Also have you tried familysearch.org as they have BMDs for people all over the world.
    Margaret

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    • #3
      Thank you very much, Margaret. I have been told that, if it works out, it would be best to try & contact the Amish direct because they have all the details of the communities.....ie who was in which group & what happened to that group, which is what I'm really interested in....ie did they stay together & live as an Amish group or did the community break down etc. Obviously, I could try & reconstruct that from all the individual stories but it would be a lot of work & might not give an overview. I was just wondering if anyone had already approached them

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      • #4
        There are many Amish communities that have brilliant records. Be careful though, as they re-use the same names over and over.

        You will find many names like Jacob Yoder marries Sarah Esh. Jacob's father is also Jacob, so (young) Jacob becomes Jacob Yoder Young and Sarah becomes Mrs Young.......lol. That's not their official names, just what the community knows tham as. They all know what their true names are, just don't use them.

        They have a brilliant newspaper system which will place ads if you are interested.

        This is possibly their biggest

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        • #5
          Thank you very much, Harry's Mum......oh gosh, I didn't realise they had "community names " which weren't their real names. I assume the names used on the land rental documents in Germany are the real names as they are legal documents & I guess they had to prove their identities (had a heck of a lot of trouble when we bought our house because my passport didn't feature my maiden name)

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          • #6
            All the names on official documents will be the correct names. They are very good at form-filling and following all the rules. They have a good community network of saving for emergencies so everyone is looked after as they refuse pensions and insurance.

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            • #7
              Harry's mum...the link you've given me for the Amish newspaper comes over as "account suspended". You haven't got any more postal/email addresses or websites, have you ?

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              • #8
                Sorry, Greyingrey...it was fine.. I've just checked it again and it has a message saying they are changing servers. See if you can access it now (or later) and let me know.

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                • #9
                  Thank you very much.....I'll try later

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                  • #10
                    Thanks, Harry's Mum....yes, I get the message saying they're changing servers now. They give an email address so I can contact that.

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