It was a pleasure to stay with a Bluffton University host family at an 1852 farm house located on a Nature Reserve connected with the Ohio school. The historic house was built by the earliest Swiss Mennonite settlers to the west-central Ohio community. The historian saw geese, deer tracks, and signs of abundant wildlife, perhaps much like the way it was when the Mennonites migrated to the region decades ago.
An Eastern Mennonite High School exchange student from Paraguay read Psalm 23 in German from Simon L. Yoder’s German-English Bible, March, 2014. Beachy Amish Minister Simon L. Yoder, the Historian’s grandfather, lived 1902-1993, and the German Bible was given to Simon’s grandson. The student was enrolled in the Historian’s Global Christianity class.
The Historian attended a workshop on DACS, an archival content standard for archives and libraries, at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, March, 2014. Traffic on the busy Lincoln Highway rushes past important historic records in the nearby archives that remind one of an earlier era, before tour buses, harried shoppers, and commercialism changed the idyllic Lancaster farmland.
An Amish buggy clips along on Hobson Road, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, March 8, 2014. The triangle caution sign on the rear of the buggy warns automobile drivers of a slow-moving vehicle ahead.
This Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, hosts children from the Amish families in the surrounding community. The outdoor toilets, fences that reveal the boundaries with the fields nearby, and the bell atop the school are indicative of an earlier era of education. The teacher and children come on foot, sled, or sleigh, and are rarely stopped by snow or inclement conditions. Most will finish their education around the 8th grade.
The Information Superhighway has changed schools. In the 1970s high schools had books, magazines, and traditional libraries. Today students can access a world of resources on computers in their classrooms. The Kennel Charles Church History desk (right), with Martyrs Mirror on the top shelf, hosts a state-of-the-art computer that brings information to the student in the history teacher’s classroom at Eastern Mennonite High School, Harrisonburg, Virginia.
New bridge over Linville Creek replaces 1898 wrought iron truss bridge that many Broadway, Virginia, residents, including Mennonites, used in early 20th century, a photo by MennoniteArchivesofVirginia on Flickr.
Mennonites in the Northern District of Virginia Mennonite Conference often used this old iron bridge to head west towards mission stations in the West Virginia highlands. Today a modern bridge over the steady Linville Creek reduces the 1898 bridge to a foot and bike path. The old bridge in Broadway, Virginia, is on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia.