ABSTRACT
AMISH, NEBRASKA The Nebraska Amish, also known as the Old School Amish, reside in central Pennsylvania and are considered to be among the most traditional and conservative Amish groups in the United States. They are a division of the Old Order Amish, a conservative Protestant sect whose origins lay in a schism during the late seventeenth century among the Mennonites of Switzerland and the German Rhineland. Adhering strongly to the Amish tenets of separation from the world and simplicity of life, the Nebraska Amish have maintained folk practices in their church and family lives that are reminiscent of their European Anabaptist roots and rural colonial life in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are four noncontiguous settlements of Nebraska Amish in central Pennsylvania. The majority live in the northern end of the Kishacoquillas Valley, colloquially known as Big Valley, located in Mifflin County. Other settlements are in the Penns Valley region of Centre County, the McClure region of Snyder County, the Winfield region on the border of Union and Snyder counties, and the latest in Ashtabula County, Ohio.
