Ohio Amish Country

An Amish mother on a shopping trip.

Ohio's largest settlement is centered around Holmes County and in 2021 included an estimated 37,770 children and adults, the second largest in the world after the population of 41,000 centered around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.[13] The Holmes County community includes multiple affiliations or orders[4]^: 142[14]^: 6 and is the most highly-concentrated, diverse and complex of Amish settlements worldwide.[6] The settlement includes eleven separate Amish affiliations.[6]^: 35 Four affiliations, the New Order Amish, Old Order Amish, Andy Weaver, and Swartzentruber, as of 2010 made up about 97% of church districts in the settlement, with the Old Order Amish the largest portion.[6]^: 17–18 The Swartzentruber Amish include three separate groups, the Swartzentruber-Andy Weaver (which is unrelated to the Andy Weaver group), Swartzentruber-Mose Miller, and Swartzentruber-Joe Troyer, each of which considers itself the true Swartzentruber.[6]^: 43 Other Amish groups include Stutzman-Troyer, Roman, Old Order Tobe, New Order Tobe, and New Order Christian Fellowship.[6]^: 36 There are multiple other populations of Anabaptists in the area, including Beachy Amish, Brethren, and Mennonite.[6]^: 32

The settlement stretches into the adjacent Ashland, Coshocton, Stark, Tuscarawas, and Wayne Counties.[9] Holmes County itself has the highest concentration of Amish in any US county;[9][15] the Amish make up half the county's population.[16] In contrast, in Lancaster County the Amish represent about 7% of the county's population.[13][17]

Holmes County has been projected to become the first in the US with a majority-Amish population.[18] Amish in general have high birth rates; as of 2012 in Holmes County, the most conservative groups had both the highest birth rates and the highest retention rates of young adults deciding to be baptized into the order.[4]^{: 162–163}

Young Amish men.

Ohio's second largest settlement is centered around Geauga County with in 2021 an estimated 19,420 members, the fourth-largest in the world.[13]

Data from 2010 according to "Association of Religion Data Archives" (ARDA)[19] and from 2020 according to the "US Religion Census" report.[20][21] Data are only shown for Old Order Amish and exclude related groups such as Beachy Amish-Mennonite Churches, Maranatha Amish-Mennonite, Amish-Mennonites and Mennonites in general.

County	Adherents (2010)	Adherents (2020)	Change 2010-20	% 2010	% 2020
Holmes	17,654	19,793	12.1%	41.67%	44.76%
Geauga	8,537	9,549	11.8%	9.14%	10.01%
Wayne	9,283	9,130	1.6%	8.10%	7.81%
Coshocton	1,760	2,533	43.9%	4.77%	6.92%
Knox	2,111	2,843	34.7%	3.46%	4.53%
Ashtabula	2,203	3,725	69.1%	2.17%	3.82%
Ashland	1,661	1,877	13.0%	3.13%	3.58%
Monroe	542	475	12.3%	3.70%	3.55%
Carroll	614	937	52.6%	2.13%	3.51%
Hardin	939	1,051	11.9%	2.93%	3.42%
Morrow	590	1,175	99.2%	1.69%	3.36%
Tuscarawas	2,370	3,128	32.0%	2.56%	3.35%
Noble	0	434		0.00%	3.07%
Gallia	733	875	19.4%	2.37%	3.00%
Harrison	305	429	40.7%	1.92%	2.96%
Jackson	339	875	158.1%	1.02%	2.68%
Trumbull	3,864	5,044	30.5%	1.84%	2.50%
Guernsey	552	806	46.0%	1.38%	2.10%
Adams	471	501	6.4%	1.65%	1.82%
Logan	640	738	15.3%	1.39%	1.60%
Vinton	120	194	61.7%	0.89%	1.52%
Highland	269	570	111.9%	0.62%	1.32%
Morgan	95	91	4.2%	0.63%	0.66%
Meigs	92	136	47.8%	0.39%	0.61%
Pike	97	150	54.6%	0.34%	0.55%
Muskingum	293	449	53.2%	0.34%	0.52%
Perry	50	169	238.0%	0.17%	0.48%
Columbiana	0	435		0.00%	0.43%
Portage	387	619	59.9%	0.24%	0.38%
Mercer	95	153	61.0%	0.23%	0.36%
Defiance	124	137	10.5%	0.32%	0.36%
Medina	616	571	7.3%	0.36%	0.31%
Richland	313	343	9.6%	0.25%	0.27%
Van Wert	0	70		0.00%	0.24%
Belmont	95	122	28.4%	0.13%	0.18%
Huron	103	108	4.9%	0.17%	0.18%
Pickaway	53	97	83.0%	0.09%	0.17%
Stark	447	602	34.7%	0.12%	0.16%
Williams	63	61	3.2%	0.16%	0.16%
Marion	60	96	60.0%	0.09%	0.15%
Preble	0	62		0.00%	0.15%
Washington	0	85		0.00%	0.14%
Athens	0	80		0.00%	0.13%
Licking	38	210	452.6%	0.02%	0.12%
Hocking	17	25	47.0%	0.06%	0.09%
Scioto	0	62		0.00%	0.08%
Fairfield	127	110	13.3%	0.09%	0.07%
Ross	103	31	69.9%	0.13%	0.04%
Total	58,825	71,756	22.0%	0.48%	0.61%

Amish cuisine restaurant.

Efforts to promote the Holmes County community as a tourist destination began in the 1950s.[29]^: 26 Approximately four million tourists visit Holmes County each year as of 2012; the direct economic impact at the time was estimated at $154 million annually.[29]^: 26 Amish tourism is a major part of the economy of Holmes County.[4]^: 392[6]^{: 30, 177}

Interest in the Amish was increased by the 1955 Broadway musical Plain and Fancy.[4]^: 53 By the 1960s bus tours of Holmes County were available.[4]^: 53 The towns of Millersburg (the county seat), Berlin, Walnut Creek, and Charm in Holmes County, and Sugarcreek just across the county line in Tuscarawas County, have a large tourism industry.[30] In 2017, Holmes County was the second most popular tourist destination in Ohio.[31]

An Amish buggy in Holmes County.

Ohio's Amish tourism centers around the towns of Berlin and Walnut Creek in Holmes County, and in Sugarcreek, just across the border in Tuscarawas County, all of which are situated along US Route 30.[29]^: 43–44

Beginning in the 1990s business leaders have developed Walnut Creek into an American-Victorian themed town, which the University of Dayton's Susan Trollinger calls "puzzling" because of the stark contrast between Victorian overdecorating and the Amish plainness.[29]^: 49–50 Tourist-oriented businesses typically include "resting places" such as parlors in hotels or wrapround porches lined with rocking chairs or other seating on retail shops, which emphasizes a sense of having plentiful time.[29]^: 57 Her conclusion is that the Victorian theme and emphasis on resting places is capitalizing on the attraction of nostalgia for a simpler life with plentiful time, which it has in common with the Amish.[29]^: 51–60 Large parking lots and sidewalks connect the business district, which is condensed into six square blocks and connected by wide sidewalks, further encouraging a feeling of a slower-pace and life lived on foot.[29]^: 59 American flags and other patriotic-themed decor are commonly displayed in both exterior and interior spaces, which Trollinger again finds interesting when contrasted to the Amish, who refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and do not fly flags at their schools and homes.[29]^: 70

More tourists visit Berlin, permanent population 685, than any other town in Ohio Amish Country.[29]^: 83 Berlin was the first town in Ohio to market the Amish to tourists.[29]^: 83 Berlin's business district is large, with as of 2012 more than 40 shops, 10 hotels, and multiple restaurants large and small.[29]^: 85 Trollinger calls its architecture and offerings "eclectic" but dominated by the American frontier and the 1950s and points out that like Walnut Creek, all call back to the past.[29]^{: 88, 106} Trollinger argues that the frontier theme in Berlin presents a story of peaceful people leaving crowded cities behind in order to make a better life for themselves and their families.[29]^: 94

Sugarcreek's historical beginnings were rooted in cheese production. Swiss immigrants arrived in the early 1830s and used the milk from Amish dairy farms to produce their cheese and in the 1950s created an annual Ohio Swiss Festival; the success of early festivals as an attraction for tourists resulted in local business leaders transforming the town into a Swiss village starting in 1965.[29]^{: 117–119} By the early 70s the first tourist-oriented businesses were opening, and the tourism industry in Sugarcreek was centered not only around the Amish but also around a steam engine passenger train operated by the Ohio Central Railroad which ran between Sugarcreek and Baltic until 2004. Since the train stopped running, tourism in Sugarcreek has decreased.[29]^{: 118–120} Trollinger theorizes that unlike Walnut Creek and Berlin, which support a nostalgia that reassures tourists that what they are nostalgic for still exists in America, and is therefore a nostalgia of hope, the Swiss theme of Sugarcreek inspires a nostalgia for something that is forever gone—that is, a period in which the United States was a white-majority country—and so does not reassure.[29]^{: 134–135, 142}

According to Trollinger the Amish tourist experience is targeted very strategically to attract a specific audience.[29]^: 141 She describes typical Amish Country tourists as a "relatively homogeneous group": white, working or middle-class, middle-aged to retirement-aged Americans visiting with their spouse and another married couple who arrive in late-model American-made SUVs or minivans and often wearing shirts with American flags, sports team logos, or Harley Davidson logos.[29]^: 28–29 Trollinger concludes that the average tourist is of "moderate income, average education, and moderately conservative views."[29]^: 28–29

Trollinger theorizes that Amish Country tourism reassures visitors that a form of traditional American life still exists even during and after periods of rapid societal change.[29]^{: xxi, 33–43, 50–55} She notes that the largest of the tourist-oriented restaurants serves scratch-cooked meals "family style", serving all food in common serving dishes from which each person serves themself, serving dishes are refilled until all are satisfied, and nothing on the table is a convenience item, which she says "recreat(es) a cultural memory of family" and the sharing of a homecooked meal.[29]^: 54–57 The most visible Amish in Amish country are typically young women making, serving, or selling food; shopping with multiple young children in tow; or men doing woodwork or farming or driving buggies.[29]^{: 79, 105} Taken all together, Trollinger argues, the tourism experience in Amish Country, and especially in Walnut Creek and Berlin, reassures the tourist that "it is still possible to live at a leisurely pace, to have clarity about what it means to be a man or a woman, to feel patriotic".[29]^: 79

According to Trollinger, some Amish view tourists as an opportunity to "shar(e) their Christian witness through their visibly different common life and daily practices."[29]^: xiv Some "expressed compassion" for the tourists, whose daily lives were filled with pressure and who were charmed by the slower paced and simpler life of the Amish.[29]^: xiv

The Amish Country Byway is an Ohio Scenic Byway, designated in 1998, that runs 164 miles (264 km) through many Amish communities in Holmes County.[32] The byway focuses on backroads with views of rolling farmland and concentrations of Amish homes, farms, and home businesses.[33]

Behalt, meaning "to keep or to remember", is a 10 ft × 265 ft (3.0 m × 80.8 m) cyclorama by Heinz Gaugel located in the museum.[38][39][34] According to the Columbus Dispatch it has been called the “Sistine Chapel of the Amish and Mennonites”.[38] Anabaptist scholar Susan Biesecker-Mast calls it "an effort to exceed the tourist economy of Holmes County by offering a transformative rhetoric for its visitors".[40] The painting was created over 14 years and completed in 1992.[41][42] It is one of four existing cycloramas in the US and one of only 16 in the world; Behalt is the only existing cyclorama painted by a single artist.[41][34] It follows the development of Anabaptism from the time of Jesus through the 1990s and portrays approximately 1200 biblical and historical figures.[43][41]

Amish schools are regulated by the Minimum Standards for the Amish Private Elementary Schools of the State of Ohio (Ohio Minimum Standards), which requires certain subjects be taught, including English, mathematics, geography, history, health, German, vocal music. Classes are required to be taught in English, still the second language for most Amish, except in German classes.[50]^{: 111, 146} In practice, each school sets its own curriculum, and according to Karen Johnson-Weiner, despite the Ohio Minimum Standards, certain subjects—typically geography, history, and health—are sometimes not taught because of objections from teachers or parents.[50]^{: 111–113} Some Old Order Amish parents object to teaching history because "there is too much glorification of war". Johnson-Weiner reported in 2007 that students at a school taught by a Swartzentruber member didn't study geography or health because of the teacher's objection to teaching those subjects.[50]^: 112

Texts are typically chosen from those offered by several publishers, including Pathway Publishing Company, Gordonville Printing Company, and Study Time, which are Old Order Amish presses, or the Schoolaid Publishing Company or Rod and Staff, which are Mennonite presses.[50]^: 112

1901 McGuffey Reader

Some, such as Gordonville, reprint texts such as Essentials of English Spelling, first published in 1919, for very conservative schools. Some supply reprints of early editions of McGuffey Readers to Swartzentruber schools.[50]^{: 208–209} The Dick and Jane series from the 1950s are valued by some schools for presenting a non-Amish world but one that "does not expose (students) to the dangers of modern society".[50]^{: 209–210} The Strayer-Upton Practical Arithmetics Series, first published in the 1920s, similarly uses story problems that do not represent modern life.[50]^{: 58, 210} The texts are also valued for their emphasis on rote learning, mastery of basics, and respect for authority and for relative lack of emphasis on discussion-based learning.[50]^{: 210–211} Many conservative Old Order Amish also avoid carrying religion into the schools, as they believe parents and religious leaders, rather than schoolteachers, should be teaching religion; these older texts tend to be "moralistic...but religiously neutral".[50]^: 211 The older texts are also valued for the continuity they provide; children are learning from the same textbooks as their parents and grandparents.[50]^: 211

Other publishers, such as Pathway, created texts specifically designed for use in Old Order Amish schools using a combination of curated stories and essays originally published elsewhere and those written for the purpose. The eight-grade Pathway Reader, Our Heritage, contains poetry by Longfellow and Whitman as well as the stories of Dirk Willems and the Hochstetler Massacre.[50]^: 216+ Illustrations in the series contain no images of people. Some conservative communities have rejected the Pathway Readers as too progressive in its approach and too implicitly religious, .[50]^: 218 Pathway Readers, the first of which were published in 1968, have not been revised.[50]^: 219

School Aid and Study Time also publish purpose-created textbooks along with teaching materials, and periodically updates texts with input from teachers and new pedagogy.[50]^{: 219–223}

Some teachers, especially in Swartzentruber schools, create their own teaching materials, making multiple copies for student use with homemade hectographs.[50]^: 252

According to Johnson-Weiner writing in 2007, teachers are typically not chosen from a pool of applicants but instead recruited by school board members.[50]^: 126 Ohio Minimum Standards does not require teachers to have more than an eighth-grade education but does encourage "a self-imposed research into the school's accepted subjects".[50]^: 127