

Growing families were using up dwindling agricultural and business resources. While the New Order Amish accepted some forms of modernization, the Old Order Amish continued to follow the traditional practice of living in the modern world while remaining separate from it.īy the early 1970s, the Ohio Amish, who belonged to the Schwartzentruber subgroup, were experiencing an overcrowding problem. In 1850, a second schism created the New Order Amish and Old Order Amish. In the seventeenth century, however, several members broke ties and formed their own religious sect, headed by Jakob Ammann. They were originally part of the Dutch Mennonite movement. Harmony’s Amish came to Minnesota from Wayne County, Ohio, where they had lived for several decades after immigrating to the United States in the eighteenth century to escape persecution for their religious beliefs.

It is the least progressive of Amish orders, and its members do not use modern technologies or conveniences, including electricity and running water.

The Amish who live in the countryside of Harmony and Canton belong to the most conservative Amish group, called the Old Order Amish. Since its founding in 1974, the Harmony-area Amish community has grown to become the largest Amish population in Minnesota.
#Harmony mn drivers#
Drivers in modern dress travel alongside people dressed in dark, plain clothing resembling mid-nineteenth-century attire-members of a local Amish enclave. On the streets of the small town of Harmony, in Fillmore County, cars and trucks share road space with horse-drawn black buggies and wagons.
