I went on a VIP tour of Pennsylvania’s Amish – tourists acted like it was a safari
The Amish first settled in Pennsylvania after fleeing persecution in 18th century Europe - Alamy
It’s the long clothes lines drying in the breeze that alert you to the fact that you are entering Amish country. “Every day is washing day for the Amish women,” says Jim, our driver and guide. “Every day except Sunday.”
Staying with friends in Pennsylvania last month, I wanted to visit the super-fertile farmland of Lancaster County, about an hour west of Philadelphia. It’s where this breakaway religious sect first settled after fleeing persecution in 18th century Europe, and still contains the largest single grouping of America’s 367,000 Amish.
Their belief in simple living, plain dress and Christian pacifism also eschews modern technology. In most households, there is no telephone, internet, TV or washing machine. No mains electricity at all, in fact – hence the tell-tale washing lines.
The long lines of washing are a regular feature in Lancaster County, because the Amish eschew modern appliances - Cavan Images / Alamy Stock Photo/https://www.alamy.com
Like many people, I first became aware of this particular branch of the so-called “Pennsylvania Dutch” (actually a corruption of Deutsch – in other words, German) thanks to a movie filmed 40 years ago this summer. In 1984, Hollywood came to Lancaster County in the shape of Peter Weir’s thriller Witness.
Harrison Ford played John Book, a big city cop ordered to protect a young Amish boy who had witnessed a murder while visiting Philadelphia. Book found himself not only seduced by the Amish lifestyle but also by the lad’s mother, played by Kelly McGillis.
I watched the film again recently and it’s still as good as I remembered – albeit slightly idealised (those lovely wooden barns we see being communally constructed have largely been replaced by metal and fibreglass structures). To assimilate, Harrison Ford’s cop was made to wear the trademark Amish trousers held up by braces (belts are considered ostentatious), jacket and broad-brimmed straw hat. The women wear ankle-length dresses that cover their shoulders and upper arms, along with bonnets (black for unmarried women and girls, white for wives).
The Amish community retains a belief in simple living, plain dress and Christian pacifism - Alamy
As distinctive as their clothes are their horse-drawn buggies – the Amish being forbidden to drive cars. And there were a gratifying number of buggies clattering along the byways around the neighbouring towns of Bird in Hand and Intercourse (yes, really, and my teenage daughter inevitably photographed the road sign to amuse her friends back home).
I noticed two companies offering tourists rides in Amish buggies, but instead we opted for a 90-minute minibus excursion organised by The Amish Experience, a well-established company based in Bird in Hand. Pottering along the country back roads at a speed little faster than the buggies, Jim kept up a steady stream of facts and figures.
We learnt, for example, that all the non-Amish, regardless of nationality, are known as “English”; and that even in death, they shun ostentation – their gravestones being small and identical. We had to hold back on a scheduled visit to an Amish cemetery, however, because a funeral was in progress. Several buggies were lined up outside, a poignant sight that might have come from 200 years ago.
Jim pointed out the “phone shanties”, upright garden sheds that looked like outside toilets, but actually house a telephone used for doing business with the “English” (phones aren’t permitted in the home itself). Then there were the tractors with metal wheels – and thus too uncomfortable for taking further than the farmyard. Horse-drawn implements are still widely used in the fields.
'Phone shanties' such as this outhouse are where the Amish can call 'the English', as most do not have telephones in their homes - Andre Jenny / Alamy Stock Photo/https://www.alamy.com
We also passed several one-room schools, where children under 14 (when formal education ends) could be seen through open doorways – little bonneted heads turning to repay our curiosity as we trundled past. Discarded outside these tiny schools are push-scooters – bicycles are forbidden since they might encourage long distance travel.
Amish women are often married by the age of 21, going on to bear an average of seven children – while, of course, doing all that clothes washing. Most tend to use the sort of tub-style wringer washers that would have been common in 1940s homes.
Such domestic drudgery might appeal to the minority attracted by today’s “tradwife” subculture, with its view of wives as homemakers. But a broader fascination with the simple, communal Amish ways seems to stem from anxieties about our hi-tech, consumerist society and the isolation felt by living through our phones and increasingly atomised, individualistic lifestyles.
To understand the people behind the traditions, The Amish Experience offers an immersive, three-hour VIP (Visit-in-Person) tour, which includes a visit to an Amish home (visitors are asked to dress modestly), and it’s also possible to stay in Amish-run bed-and-breakfast guest houses. Expect a hearty fried breakfast: the Amish like to fuel up for a hard morning’s work.
A general store in Lancaster County - alamy
If our minibus ride could be seen as somewhat distasteful – a sort of “Amish safari” – the objects of our curiosity seemed long accustomed to ignoring gawpers. Tourists are asked not to shove their cameras in people’s faces, as (apart from being intrinsically rude) glorifying one’s outward appearance through photography is a fundamental Amish no-no.
When I asked Jim about how the Amish feel about the tourists, he told me about a fellow guide who was invited to an Amish wedding – the only “English” among the 500 or so guests. Feeling self-conscious, he was eventually approached by a church elder who asked him: “Well then, and how does it feel to be stared at?”
Essentials
British Airways (ba.com) flies twice daily to Philadelphia from London Heathrow from £560 return. Various trains run daily from Philadelphia to Lancaster (1hr), with return tickets from $21.
Greystone Manor Victorian Inn, in Bird in Hand, is an ornately furnished 1800s farmhouse offering double rooms from £127 a night. More than 30 Amish-run bed-and-breakfast farmsteads are also available through amishfarmstay.com.
The Amish Experience’s Visit-in-Person tours depart daily from April to October, and cost $61.95 per adult (over 13) and $51.95 per child (ages six-12).
Play The Telegraph’s brilliant range of Puzzles - and feel brighter every day. Train your brain and boost your mood with PlusWord, the Mini Crossword, the fearsome Killer Sudoku and even the classic Cryptic Crossword.