Driving the Amish by Jim Butterfield, Herald Press, 112 pp. $12.99

The Amish and Their Neighbors: The German Block, Wilmot Township, 1822-1860, by Lorraine Roth, Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario, 118 pp. $18.

Book Review

by Dale Bowman

Driving the Amish springs to life in the opening paragraph with the birth of a baby, Emma. The book's author, who goes by the pen name of Jim Butterfield, is an experienced newspaper writer, and it shows. Told in everyday language, Driving the Amish ($12.99, Herald Press) recounts the details of daily life among the Amish of Holmes County, Ohio, as they are observed by one of their drivers.

A second book, The Amish and Their Neighbours: The German Block, Wilmot Township, 1822-1860, by Lorraine Roth, tells an old story: emigration to a new world by a religious group. Written as a history, The Amish and Their Neighbours ($18, Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario) uncovers the dilemmas of different religious groups carving out a life in the wilderness near Waterloo, Canada. The plot includes a detective story: "Why did [Christian Nafziger] choose the undeveloped lands west of Waterloo, as his 'promised land'?"

Driving the Amish is a read; The Amish and Their Neighbours is a study. One twentieth-century Amish phenomenon of note is how the group has adapted to the introduction of the automobile. One coping mechanism has been to employ paid drivers. In some places, the drivers are licensed as taxi operators. Some neighbors and friends do a sideline business of driving the Amish. Some driving for the Amish is simply neighborliness. Whatever Jim Butterfield's real reason for driving the Amish, he has found a rich method of documenting their day-to-day existence. He tells his story through vignettes, on everything from birthing, to farm work, to religion, to weddings, to
funerals. This kind of breadth might suffice, but in Driving the Amish Butterfield even includes a short, tangential chapter on the Amish and income tax.

Butterfield shows himself throughout as a writer who is a good watcher. Since the book opens with a birth, I expected it to close with a funeral. It doesn't; the funeral appears in the next to last chapter. The book closes with preparations for a wedding, and the final scene is one of the well-watched details that make Driving the Amish a good read. ``When I turned to go, there beside the window was a long row of shoes--all sizes, men's and women's. And there with a stained cloth was a four-year-old girl, busily rubbing black polish all over them.''

Lorraine Roth's The Amish and Their Neighbours could use a bit more sifting of its wealth of detail. At times, I felt as I read as if a wheelbarrow filled with everything from deeds to deaths had been dumped in my lap. But if your family tree includes a Beck, Jutzi, Hunsberger, Shantz, Gingerich, Nafziger, Eby, Lichti, Erb, Schultz, Schwartzentruber, Brenneman or Kropf, then the history is worth sifting through. I am certain this book will be the definitive work on the
area known in Canada as the German Block. Mixed in with the literal descriptions of building types, listings of occupations, and minutes of meetings are such gems as this from the section
titled "The Contribution of Women in the New Settlement":

"An anonymous emigrant had the following advice: 'Let every man who has a wife and who intends to settle in Canada, bring her with him; and let him who has not the article and can get it good, and of a suitable temper, etc., provide himself before he starts; but mind, she must neither be a fine lady, nor one who cannot help, or has no resources within herself. . . .'"

While such advice may be hilarious in 1999, The Amish and Their Neighbours amply documents that the right kind of wife, like the right kind of attitude, could make the difference in a tough land. The wilderness that Christian Nafziger found was not turned into tillable land and a democratic society by people of a retiring sort. A toughness was required to wade through the bureaucratic nightmares involved between groups with different languages and customs. It
takes a toughness to work through the book, too, but the story is worth it. Finally, I have a quibble with each book.

Having grown up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as tourism exploded into a multi-million dollar industry, I may be oversensitive to the notion of the Amish being cute. But Driving the Amish feels like it is aimed at a tourist market: the Amish as the quaint ones. Then again, Herald Press probably wasn't looking for a tell-all. But maybe they should be. If we don't tell our own darker stories, the reporters of ABC's "20/20" and their ilk will.

The Amish and Their Neighbours could have benefitted from sharper pinpointing of its audience. The book will only be read by historians, history buffs of the area around Waterloo, or genealogy fanatics. But the book contains short insets with good, solid information on everything from Amish Mennonites to the products of the maple tree. If intended for a general audience, the story would benefit from a focus on personalities instead of history.

The Amish and Their Neighbours unearths the nitty-gritty of the politics and actual costs of carving a life from the wilderness in the New World. Driving the Amish accumulates daily bits to build a history from an outsider's perspective on the world's most stable Amish community in the twentieth century. The Amish and Their Neighbors is a broader, richer study than Driving the
Amish, but a tougher read. One book goes by the nightstand; the other belongs in the study or den.

 

Dale Bowman, a Chicago journalist, writes the "Outdoor" column for the Chicago Sun-Times. He and his family attend Evanston Mennonite Church.

 

Mennonite Historical Bulletin, April 1999