Each year I look forward to the release of new statistics on Amish Population from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
Starting in 2020 they added a document that showed Amish settlements by county in each state. At that time I decide to create a map of the counties to better visualize where Amish settlements were 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 in 2020 of the counties in Iowa where the Amish have settlements. This map did not change in 2022 but did have some changes in 2023. You can perhaps spot them in my 2023 map further below.
Note: Washington County was not in the data set, but is the center of the Kalona settlement so I included in on this map. It is in the 2022 data set and beyond.
Below is the map with the 2020 data. I will not say that it is perfect, but probably greater than 95% accurate based on the data. It is sometimes a bit hard to find the counties on the map, and sometime I just make mistakes.
I decided to update my map using the 2022 data and it is below. The 2022 data set is much better and of course there were some additional counties and a few settlements that were no longer there. However, there were not a lot of changes.
The Amish did start a settlement in a new state which is included in the 2022 data. You can see a new settlement in Santa Fe County, New Mexico.
However, the data set from Young Center gives the county as Santa Fe, but it is actually in Rio Arriba County to the north. The settlement is just south of the Colorado border. The settlement is know as Ortiz as the nearest community is Ortiz, Colorado. I retained the mark for the county listed in the data set, but it is the bigger county just above.
Here is a map using the 2023 data which was recently released. The 2023 data still has the wrong county listed for New Mexico, but I have shown the actual county where they live in this map version.
If you look closely you can see a few new counties here and there and also a few that have been removed. If you want to get details of where the Amish live make sure you visit the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.
I believe that this map gives a great visual of where the Amish currently live. I will admit it is not perfect, but hopefully I didn’t make too many mistakes.
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
Braman's Wanderings 