Pennsylvania
Lancaster County Amish Consider Leaving
The Amish are starting to leave Lancaster County, according to an article published last week in the daily digital magazine Ozymandus (or “OZY” for short). The piece, written by Chris Scinta, indicates that the tourism industry, which has blossomed in the county, is so badly affecting the lifestyle of the Amish themselves that some have […]
Nonresistant Amish Leave Western Pennsylvania
The Schwartzentruber Amish are finally leaving Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and the local paper, the Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown, is obviously pleased. In an editorial last Friday, the paper presented its law-and-order stance against the Amish violators of local regulations. It indicated that the Schwartzentruber families had refused, for their own religious reasons, to put safety orange […]
Amish Victims of Cambria County, Pennsylvania
Andy Schwartzentruber was released from the Cambria County, Pennsylvania, jail last week after completing his 90 day sentence for refusing to bring his outhouses into compliance with the orders of a judge. The Amish man feels that state and county regulations specifying construction and cleaning details of outhouses violate his religious rights. He had provided […]
Persecute the Pennsylvania Amish — and Compromise
Judge Norman A. Krumenacker in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, who sent an Amish man to jail in March, last week ordered two other Amish families to be evicted from their homes. At a court hearing on Friday, he gave the two families the weekend to remove their belongings from their buildings. He ordered sheriff’s deputies to […]
Amish Man Sent to Prison in Pennsylvania
A district judge in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, sent a conservative Amish man to jail for refusing to compromise with officials over the outhouses he provides at a school on his property. Judge Norman Krumenacker last week found Andy Schwartzentruber in contempt of court for failing to bring the outhouses into compliance with regulations that govern […]
Amish Outhouses in Pennsylvania
The latest chapter in a drama that made the national news in June played out in a Cambria County, Pennsylvania, courtroom last Thursday when a District Judge upheld a lower court’s findings against an Amish man. Andy Schwartzentruber, owner of land on which an Amish school is located, continues to defy official county sewage disposal […]
Amish Outhouses and Pennsylvania Bureaucracy
Two men from the ultraconservative Schwartzentruber Amish sect each face 90 days in jail for not cleaning their outhouses according to Pennsylvania state law. Andy Schwartzentruber, a 52 year old man and the owner of property in rural Cambria County in west-central Pennsylvania, and Sam Yoder, 53, an elder of a school on the property, […]
Injuries to Amish Children in Pennsylvania [journal article review]
Amish farm kids have different types of accidents from other country children, according to a recent study published in a pediatrics journal. Five authors at the Hershey Medical Center of Penn State University studied the records of 135 admissions of Amish children to the trauma center at the Children’s Hospital from January 1997 through November […]
Central Pennsylvania Amish Couple Threatened with Jail
The horse and buggy culture, symbolic of the Amish and their resistance to contemporary lifestyles, is not always appreciated in the bucolic valleys of Central Pennsylvania. When conflicts arise with their non-Amish neighbors, the Amish tend to lose. In a case that has been dragging on for nearly two years, a local judge decided in […]
