Each year I look forward to the release of new statistics on Amish Population from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

This year they included a document that showed Amish settlements by county in each state. Back in November I started to create a map of the counties to better visualize where Amish settlements are in the US.

I started with Iowa since it is where I was born and my great grandparents had lived in the Amish settlement in Kalona.

Here is the map I created of the counties in Iowa where the Amish have settlements.

Note: Washington County is not in the data set, but is the center of the Kalona settlement and has been included.

I also included Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota at that time.

Late last year I worked on filling in the rest of the map and I also looked for a good base map to use.

I believe that this map gives a great visual of where the Amish currently live.

It is interesting to see the patterns of where the settlements are.

I have some ideas for some other maps, as maps from different time periods would be beneficial for Genealogy research.

Steven