New York Amish: Life in the Plain Communities of the Empire State

Tracing Amish settlement in New York from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner draws on more than thirty years of participant-observation, interviews, and archival research to introduce the Amish to their non-Amish neighbors. In the last decade, New York State has had the fastest-growing Amish population. This work highlights the diversity of Amish settlement in New York State and the contribution of New York’s Amish to the state’s rich cultural heritage. The second edition of New York Amish updates settlement areas to acknowledge recently established communities and to demonstrate the impact of growth, schism, and migration on existing settlements. In addition, chapters treating external and internal challenges to Amish settlement and the challenges Amish settlement poses to neighboring non-Amish communities have been updated, and a new chapter looks to the future of New York’s Amish. All maps have been updated, and a new map showing all of New York’s Amish communities has been added.