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Nebraska Amish Settlement Revisited
by John E. Sharp
The windmill is a lone sentinel of an extinct Old Order Amish settlement in Gosper County, Nebraska. It turns in the wind on the former property of Bishop Yost H. Yoder, whose sudden death in 1901 closed the door on this 24-year dream to establish a church "without spot or wrinkle" on the Great Plains.The first settlers, in 1880, were nine Yoder families from Juniata County, Pennsylvania, led by Bishop Yost H. Yoder (1843-1901). Others came and some left, but the settlement never grew much larger than a dozen families. There were years of sufficient rainfall and good harvests, but drought and a depressed economy had a devastating effect on the transplanted Pennsylvania farmers. Eventually, by 1904, all the families had scattered to various other settlements, including Mifflin County, Pennsylvania.
I visited there, camera in hand, in September 1999. The homesteads of the Amish were gone. In their place were acres of lush irrigated corn. Corn like this grew only in the hopes and dreams of the former Amish farmers. The only structure left to mark a homestead was the windmill. The cemetery was well hidden by the tall corn and weeds, though it was marked by a weathered wooden sign. The sign had been crafted by a boy from a neighboring farm who earned his Eagle Boy Scout award by caring for the cemetery. Now the half dozen gravestones were nearly lost in the uncut grass.
I found the gravestone of Bishop Yost H. Yoder. I remembered that it was he for whom the "Nebraska Amish" in my home community in the Kishacoquillas Valley of Mifflin County, Pennsylvania had been named. In 1881 Yoder had been called there to help organize a dissenting Old Order group. Because Yoder was living in Nebraska at the time, the group was nicknamed the "Nebraska Amish," a name still used to designate this most traditional of all Old Order Amish groups.
I wondered whether anyone in the neighborhood still remembered that this Amish settlement had existed. I was pleasantly surprised to discover neighbors who did, indeed, remember. I found Janet Renken, a schoolteacher, and mother of the Boy Scout caretaker, who has a deep interest in this community's history. From her files she retrieved a hand-drawn map of the former Amish landowners located within the square mile that she and her husband owned and farmed. She had newspaper accounts of the Amish settlement and the names of various Amish families from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, who had visited the cemetery in recent years. They usually left a bit of money for the upkeep of the cemetery. She directed me to another neighbor, Caroline Langenberg, who had also, on occasion, received Pennsylvania pilgrims, looking for the cemetery of their ancestors. And I recognized the names, some of whom had been my neighbors in the Kishacoquillas Valley. Behind Caroline's house stood a schoolhouse that had been used by the Amish, and since had been moved to her farm to shelter, not scholars, but farm tools.
I drank coffee in Bertrand, the little village of 300 across the Phelps County line. Bertrand was the post office that served the Amish after the coming of the railroad. I thought of Abe Yoder, Sr., a neighbor and friend of my grandfather, who wrote about growing up in this south central Nebraska settlement. He wrote about their sod house, prairie fires, the dry years, the good years, the grasshoppers, leaving home, riding the train to Mifflin County where he married and raised his family, and his later visit with former neighbors in Gosper County. They were all good years, even the tough times. But then, Abe Yoder would think so. I remember him as congenial and optimistic. He would admit that the settlement failed, but I doubt he would think of it as futile. Of course, they had discovered some spots and wrinkles of their own. Perhaps the most contentious wrinkle was the marriage of two young people despite of the disapproval of the bride's parents. This flaunting of the parents' authority and the resulting dissension was more than the small community could bear. At least that's how one descendant of the disapproving parents remembered it. But then, Abe Yoder, would be the first to say that the Gosper County settlement was not unique in discovering its spots and wrinkles. Nor is this the only short-lived settlement, as David Luthy makes apparent in his volume on extinct Amish communities.
Despite the demise of this settlement, I'm sure Abe Yoder, who died in 1968, would be well pleased to know that the rather tenacious Amish impulse to create visible spiritual communities continues in many places beyond Gosper County, Nebraska.
John E. Sharp has been editor of the Mennonite Historical Bulletin and director of the Historical Committee of the Mennonite Church since 1995.
For more on this settlement see:
Hostetler, John A., "The Amish in Gosper County, Nebraska," Mennonite Historical Bulletin, October 1949, p. 1-2.
Kauffman, S. Duane, Mifflin County Amish and Mennonite Story, 1791-1991 (Mifflin County Mennonite Historical Society, 1991) pp.157-159.
Luthy, David, The Amish in America: Settlements that Failed (Aylmer, Ont. and LaGrange, Ind., 1986), pp. 271-276.
Yoder, Abraham S., Sr., My Life Story, 1963, reprinted 1999. Available from Abraham S. Yoder, Jr., Belleville, PA. 17004.
Mennonite Historical Bulletin, January 2000