The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1904-01-23
ANOTHER PECULIAR PEOPLE.

Outside OF Friends there are sever
al other societies which have aversion
to war, to capital punishment, the
taking of oaths and tendency TO-
wards plainness of dress as their char.
acteristics, most prominent among
which are the Dunkers, Mennonites
and Amish, and each of the three
with subdivisions, the Mennonites
with dozen or more, and all choos-
ing their ministers by lot-the min
listers from the laymen the bishops
from the ministers-for which they
claim scriptural authority. To us
the most familiar are the Dunkers
and Mennonites from being found in
some of the extreme eastern counties
Of Pennsylvania and in the New Jer-
sey county of Hunterdon, so / will
confine myself to the Amish, or
Omish, as the name is generally pro-
nounced.
These are a branch of the Mennon-
ties from whom they split as easily as
1920, following a preacher named
Amen, who, thinking the followers
of Memo were getting too worldly,
taught the substitution of hooks and
eyes for buttons and the non-trim-
ming of hair and boards. In 1865,
seeing tendency of the society to
break from these traditions, as well
as the establishment of regular places
Of worship, branch off occurred,
known as the Old School Amish, in
distinction to the new lights, or Meet
ing house Amish. Of the last there
are some 1850, mainly in Indiana
and Ohio, but there is a large settle
ment in the region east and northeast
of Lancaster, in this State; and of
these l will speak more particularly.
The branch of peaceful religionists
obtained their chief peculiarities from
their extreme plainness of dress, their
indifference, not to say aversion, to
the cause of education, their confne-
ment to agriculture as means of life
support, and their persistent isolation
from the worlds people. They Sc
lected limestone section, and being
saving and industrious thrived great
ly, but as land advanced in price dur
ing and after our Civil War they COM
mitted the inprudence common to
farmers of greater financial preten-
tions of buying too much land for the
money they had to pay down, so,
when values lowered, their margins
vanished, and many poor Amish-
man went to the wall. Clannishness
and aid in financial trouble go to-
gether. Land costing from $I25 to
$3.50 per acre sold for less than half
that price, and was bought by their
weather. Amish farmers, who aided
their weaker brothers in buying
cheaper lands outside the coveted
limestone section, where they are now
thriving, for, with a fair chance, the
Amishman will rise above poverty.
Sol that part of our State, instead of be-
ing one of bandoned farms, is where
land is bought or rented as soon as
the occasion arises for offering.
There are no storekeepers nor pro-
fessional men among the Amish I;
they leave these vocations to the
worlds people, and to the satisfaction
of the lost. If they go beyond form
ing lines strictly it is to sell machin-
cry in a modest way, or go around
the country hay -baling and threshing.
Occasionally young Amishman who
goes to market meets temptations,
combined with dress ridicule, which
lure him from his quiet home associa-
tons to a city life, but such cases are
exceptional. No sect has the power
of the Amish to hold their young peo-
pie inside the lines of strictness the
most extreme in the way of religion,
behavior and dress and this despite
the crowding among their outskirts of
the ways and customs of the gay
world brought about by the influx of
strangers through advanced modes of
travel.
One of the non-resistant traits of
the Amish is an avoidance of lawsuits
among themselves. Their troubles
are settled by church leaders, and by
outsiders only in cases of extreme ag-
gravation. Their business meetings
do not seem to be held outside their
Sabbath gatherings. These are held
at one another's homes or in plain
meetinghouses as before mentioned.
The Amish have fine barns. They
think more of them than they do OF
their houses, for in these is stored
the wealth of their farms, while in the
houses their money is spent. Slate
rooted, the fronts painted the most
pronounced red, tall-gabled, and dor
mer- -windowed and commodious, the
pride, elsewhere subdued in the
Amishman, finds vent here. Not in
as good repair and spick and span as
in the COS and '7o's, as any one has
noticed who has travelled over the
Pennsylvania Railroad. Then and in
later years, they shamed our eastern
barns. Financial trouble has taught
the Amish farmer to let the repairing
and painting of his big barn lie awhile
in abeyance, so that bright red wealth
erboards are no longer in prominent
evidence.
When the season is favorable these
barns are the Amish churches. AnC
where could these people worship
with more thankful hearts than il
autumn days, with the mows full O.
sweet-scented hay and the yellow
sheaves of wheat and oats pressing
heavily on top or straining the grid
ers of the over-hanging hay-mows
The time of worship comes, and placs
selected, finds the threshing fool
cleaned up, the heavier farm machin
| ery placed outdoors, and the whole il