Amish History Timeline

After 1850, tensions increased within individual Amish congregations and between congregations as members debated how to respond to modern society.

The Egli Amish began withdrawing from the Amish church in 1858 and later moved away from traditional Amish practices.

Yearly Dienerversammlungen, or ministerial conferences, met in different places between 1862 and 1878 to discuss how the Amish should respond to social and technological pressures.

Scholar Steven Nolt considers 1865 the symbolic point of public separation between change-minded and tradition-minded Amish.

Conservatives attended the ministerial conferences in growing numbers through 1865, when they presented the Holmes County manifesto. After it was set aside, most stopped attending.

In the second half of the 19th century, Amish communities divided into Old Order Amish and Amish Mennonites. The latter accepted motor cars, while the Old Order retained more traditional practices.

The more progressive members, roughly two-thirds of the group, became known as Amish Mennonites and eventually united with the Mennonite Church and other Mennonite denominations, mostly in the early 20th century.

After drifting away from old Amish ways, the Egli Amish changed their name to Defenseless Mennonite in 1908.

Congregations that took no side in the post-1862 division formed the Conservative Amish Mennonite Conference in 1910.

A major Old Order split occurred during World War I, when the Swartzentruber Amish in Ohio and Buchanan Amish in Iowa emerged as especially conservative affiliations.

Germany’s aggression toward the United States during World War I contributed to suppression of German in the United States, accelerating language shift and leaving the Amish and other Old Orders among the principal Pennsylvania German speakers.

The Ixheim Amish congregation, the last Amish congregation in Germany to merge, joined the neighboring Mennonite Church in 1937.

The New Order Amish formed in 1966 after certain congregations left the Old Order over questions concerning salvation and the use of modern agricultural methods.

Until the early 20th century, Old Order Amish identity was not primarily linked to technology. Telephones were the first major technology rejected, followed by cars, tractors, radios, and other inventions.

Two Amish farmers founded Pathway Publishers in 1964 to print additional material about the Amish and Anabaptists.

A policy first accepted by the Internal Revenue Service in 1961 was codified in 1965, exempting qualifying Amish individuals from Social Security-related taxes when they opposed insurance and benefits on religious grounds.

After the 1972 Supreme Court decision, Amish children generally attended Amish schools. By the end of the 20th century, almost all Amish children attended such schools.

Jonas Yoder, Wallace Miller, and Adin Yutzy were fined for refusing to send Amish children to high school. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed an exemption from compulsory education beyond eighth grade under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

Image source: Wisconsin v. Yoder

In the last quarter of the 20th century, increasing pressure on small-scale farming led more Amish men to leave farm work and start small businesses. In Greater Holmes County, full-time farming among married men fell from about 75 percent in 1965 to about 40 percent in 1996.

As of 2018, approximately 12,000 of the 40,000 dairy farms in the United States were Amish-owned.

The first attempt by Old Order Amish to settle in Latin America took place at Paradise Valley near Galeana, Nuevo León, Mexico. The settlement lasted from 1923 to 1929.

An Amish settlement was attempted in Honduras from about 1968 to 1978, but the experiment ultimately failed.

New Order Amish settlements were founded in 2015 east of Catamarca, Argentina, and at Colonia Naranjita, Bolivia.

Several dozen Old Order Amish families founded two new settlements in Kings County, Prince Edward Island, in 2016.

An Amish settlement was founded near Stuartburn in Manitoba in 2017. The colony ceased to exist in 2024 after its residents sold their properties and moved to Minnesota.

By 2024, the Amish population had surpassed 400,000, with about 415,000 Old Order Amish in the United States and more than 6,000 in Canada.

In June 2026, the total Amish population in the United States stood at 414,545, an increase of 9,970, or 2.5 percent, over the previous year. Old Order communities were present in 33 states.