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Amish Women and the Great Depression

Katherine Jellison and Steven D. Reschly

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A detailed look at how Amish women sustained family farming during the Great Depression.

At the end of the Great Depression, the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) designated the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the most economically and culturally stable agricultural community in the nation. In Amish Women and the Great Depression, Katherine Jellison and Steven D. Reschly examine the integral role that Amish women played in this Depression-era success story.

Making unprecedented use of quantitative data as well as qualitative accounts by and about Amish women, Jellison...

A detailed look at how Amish women sustained family farming during the Great Depression.

At the end of the Great Depression, the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE) designated the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the most economically and culturally stable agricultural community in the nation. In Amish Women and the Great Depression, Katherine Jellison and Steven D. Reschly examine the integral role that Amish women played in this Depression-era success story.

Making unprecedented use of quantitative data as well as qualitative accounts by and about Amish women, Jellison and Reschly reveal how Amish women sustained family farming during this devastating time. Using information from the federal government's 1935–1936 Study of Consumer Purchases (SCP), they closely examine the quantitative data related to Old Order Amish families and their neighbors in Lancaster County. SCP investigators approached women in these families to learn about household spending habits, farm crops and income, farm and household equipment, family size, home production, recreational practices, and dietary habits. Jellison and Reschly analyze the production and consumption activities of Amish women and their families as well as comparative data about the practices of their neighbors.

Amish Women and the Great Depression also incorporates a variety of qualitative sources to enliven the statistical analysis, including Old Order Amish women's diaries and memoirs; newspaper accounts by and about Amish women; government reports and related correspondence about the Lancaster County Amish; oral histories with elderly Old Order Amish people about their experiences in the 1930s; an oral history with Walter M. Kollmorgen, the author of the 1942 BAE study of Old Order Amish community stability; and photographs by New Deal photographers. This unique portrait of Depression-era farm life provides a historic look into the farming practices and daily lives of Amish women.

Reviews

Reviews

Well written and thoroughly researched, this book draws the reader into the heart of Amish women's worlds.

How did Old Order Amish families fare during the economic crises of the 1930s? Deftly weaving new oral history and photographic evidence with an ambitious New Deal–era Works Progress Administration survey, the authors' deeply researched portrait of Amish sustainability credits women and girls' productivity in house, yard, farm, and market.

Jellison and Reschly's study exemplifies the ways that deep, multilayered community studies add nuance and accuracy to understandings of the past. Using diaries, memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper accounts to add women's voices to a quantitative study of Lancaster Amish households, they establish that women's productive and reproductive labor was the linchpin of Amish farm families' survival in the Great Depression and their ability to pass farms to subsequent generations.

Using first-person reports and federal data, Jellison and Reschly beautifully capture the work rhythms of Amish women. The successful Amish choice to reject industrialization shows that modernization and alienation were far from inevitable in American agriculture.

The Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, survived and thrived during the Great Depression. Why? Amish Women and the Great Depression answers this in ways that help readers become more astute observers of both intangible and tangible cultural heritage.

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About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
200
ISBN
9781421447971
Illustration Description
55 b&w photos, 1 map
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working Together: Women and Men on the Amish Family Farm
2. Quilts and Clothing: Sewing for the Amish Family
3. Kitchen and Market: Producing Food for the Family and the

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Working Together: Women and Men on the Amish Family Farm
2. Quilts and Clothing: Sewing for the Amish Family
3. Kitchen and Market: Producing Food for the Family and the Customers
4. Field and Barn: Raising Crops and Livestock
5. Friends and Frolics: Having Fun but Saving Money
6. Religion and Rituals: Preparing the Celebrations and Ceremonies
7. Accidents and Illness: Healing the Sick and Spreading the News
8. Insiders and Outsiders: Telling the Story of the Amish Farm Family
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Notes
Index

Author Bios
Katherine Jellison
Featured Contributor

Katherine Jellison

Katherine Jellison is a professor of history and the director of the Central Region Humanities Center at Ohio University. She is the author of Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1913–1963, and It's Our Day: America's Love Affair with the White Wedding, 1945–2005.
Steven D. Reschly
Featured Contributor

Steven D. Reschly

Steven D. Reschly is professor emeritus of history at Truman State University. He is the author of The Amish on the Iowa Prairie, 1840–1910, and a coeditor of Strangers at Home: Amish and Mennonite Women in History.