I see Amish with some frequency; and Old Order Mennonites about as frequently as I see anybody: which is, pretty much any time I go anywhere, and sometimes when I don’t go anywhere. I’m nearly surrounded by Old Order neighbors, and one leases some of my fields. They’re good neighbors. They’re also about half of the farmers’ market I’m part of.
When were those years?
There was a lot of movement into the Finger Lakes in the late 1980’s and since; plus quite a lot of people born in the Finger Lakes since then.
The pies are generally sweeter than I like them, but then most pies are generally sweeter than I like them. – if you’re vegetarian or observant Jewish or Muslim: ask what the shortening in the pie crust is before eating. It’s often lard. (Which I must admit does make a very good pie crust.)
Around here the Mennonites are clean-shaven, it’s the Amish who have beards.
The Old Order Mennonites are distinguishable by clothing. Mennonites who aren’t Old Order aren’t distinguishable unless they happen to mention it for some reason.
I once encountered a family of what I presumed to be Mennonites - all the women in long dresses and lace caps - on a ferry going out to Ocracoke Island in the North Carolina Outer Banks. Threw me for a bit, but then I thought, “Why not? Even the plain people enjoy a week on the beach.”
My father was traveling for work in Central Ohio, and offered a lift to an Amish man who was walking up to the Englischer store to use the phone. Dad waited while the man made his call, then drove him back to his farm. Where the man told Dad to wait, went into his kitchen, and came out with a fresh loaf of bread that he gave to Dad. When my parents tried that loaf for dinner that night, they reported, “It was terrible.”
So did I, and I vaguely remember going to what I assume is the “little theme park of sorts” that you mention (the no-longer-open Rockome Gardens); but I don’t remember ever encountering any Amish people outside their own “areas.”
Here in St. Mary’s County, MD, there are a lot of Amish and Mennonite families. I stop at any of several farm stands for fresh produce when it’s available. We get our riding mower serviced by an Amish business. My husband’s workshop was built by an Amish man and his 3 sons. He purchased cherry and walnut lumber from an Amish sawmill. We’ve attended a few auctions on Amish farms. I pass the buggies along the road all the time. In fact, the main roads have extra wide paved shoulders to accommodate the buggies. I’ve encountered them in several stores and restaurants around the county.
By far the strangest was the time I saw a young Amish man (late teens/early 20s) playing on a stand-alone video game outside a small restaurant - think old-school PacMan.
I see Amish folk fairly often. There’s an Amish work crew building a garage nearby. I wave going to/from work. An English person (non-Amish) generally runs the business, hires Amish workers, drives them to and from job sites. Steel roofs are a big thing for them to do.
When I kayak at Keystone Power Lake there are often Amish dudes there fishing. They rig a cart to tow their rowboat from nearby Smicksburg (an Amish town). I’ve talked with them. They fish for dinner and do not consider it recreational.
We visit Smicksburg once or twice a year. Enjoy the countryside, eat shoo fly pie, etc.
I’m in Ohio, equidistant from the Geauga County Amish and the Holmes County Amish. My grandma is ex-Amish and both grandparents were Mennonite, and they lived right in the heart of Holmes County so growing up I spent a lot of time amongst the Amish. Grandma is now in a care facility in Walnut Creek, so there’s a lot of Amish women who work there.
I see a lot of Amish workers being transported for work up where I am. People specifically seek them out for building projects. My shed is Amish-built.
I was at a Cleveland Clinic facility for some time this summer and saw a group of Amish waiting for someone in surgery. I walked past them a few times and eventually gave a wave, which seemed to delight them. My grandpa always told me they love a good wave. Wish I woulda learned some PA Dutch from Grandma so I coulda blown them away with a greeting but alas, I did not.
I bought a nice shed from the Amish long ago. The delivery was very interesting. An English guy drove the truck with the Amish dude directing him. When the truck was in the correct spot, the English guy held and operated the control that slid/tilted the truck bed, but he had no idea what he was doing. The Amish guy had labeled the buttons/switches with letters and he stood there directing the English guy, “”A”, stop, ok tap “C” whoa, now “B”, again, again”.
The English’s guy wasn’t even looking at the truck/shed. He just did exactly what the Amish guy said. Together they set my huge shed down right where I wanted it.
I lived in Rochester and Binghamton, but not after 1983. So if they moved in after that I wouldn’t have seen them. I never did in either city, nor in my excursions around the Great Lakes.
Growing up in south eastern Michigan we would see bearded men in old clothes and hats driving horse buggies on the roads. We identified them as Amish, but don’t know about the details of which particular strain or sect. There were folks who would get barns and sheds built by them. My uncle would travel down to Ohio to visit their markets.
When I was in college I worked at a major lumber yard and they would come up from Ohio to buy truck loads of lumber there.
One of my housemates in college was a Mennonite, but indistinguishable from the general population.
I see them often enough in Cleveland, they come up to the hospitals for medical services. A 1 hour drive south will put me squarely in Amish territory.
I live in Indiana, and used to see Amish people with some frequency, and would occasionally see their buggies on the more rural highways. I’ve since moved to an area that’s further away from the Amish region, so I don’t see them as often as I used to.
My late uncle had a housekeeper who was an Amish woman. Once a week he would drive to her family’s farm to pick her up (she did not drive), she would spend a couple of hours giving his house a good cleaning, and then he would drive her back. I think it was about a half-hour drive for him, one way. Her work must have been worth it to him, because he employed her in that way for years.
I live in Pennsylvania and we have roughly a thousand Amish families in my county. The next county to the east of us has the largest population of Amish of any county in PA. We see them a lot. Every once in a while we’ll get a horse and buggy drive past our house, and we had a horse and buggy drive past my son’s house near Gettysburg last weekend. There are a few women working in local stores who wear the black or dark blue dresses with the apron and the bonnet. I’m not sure if they are Amish or Mennonite.
As for tourist-oriented stuff, some of the larger towns nearby have Amish markets that are more tourist-oriented, but you don’t really see any tourist type stuff in our town.
I tend to leave them alone since they are just going about their lives, and I’m sure the last thing they want is some ignorant asshole bothering them for no reason, but when I have interacted with them they have all been very friendly. I have never seen any tracts from them and they don’t ever proselytize.
They don’t have them in our town, but once you get just a little east of here you start seeing dedicated buggy parking spaces in a lot of parking lots.
We also have Amish buggy caution signs along a lot of our roadways.
PennDOT has a pamphlet specifically about safe driving in Amish country (Warning - pdf):
When I kayak, I like to cleanup the water, collecting any snagged lures/bobbers/etc. I give the stuff I collect to Amish fishermen and they appreciate it.
I asked one guy (in his 30s?) if he ever had second thoughts about the way he lives. He told me everyday those thoughts come up, but he puts them to rest, as he’s known no other life.
Ah. That’s two explanations, actually: one is that in 1983 for the most part they weren’t here yet; the other is that as far as I know the Old Order mostly don’t settle in cities, so that although you might occasionally see a few in a city the size of Rochester or Binghamton if they needed to come in for a specific reason – say at a hospital or airport – for the most part they’re in rural areas and do their shopping in the villages in those areas.
I don’t know about the Great Lakes, even now, though I wouldn’t be surprised if rural areas there also now have a significant Old Order population; but I’m rarely that far north. But there are certainly lots in the Finger Lakes.
I encounter their horse-drawn wagons in mid-Michigan and southern Ontario pretty much any time I’m driving on country roads.
I was twice in close proximity to what I assume were Amish-type folks: once on a Sault Locks tour boat, and another (Mennonite) selling cheese in northern Mexico. I only spoke to the latter, and only enough to complete a transaction.