HISTORY
The Amish come from 16th century Anabaptists, more specifically from the Mennonites. Swiss Anabaptists who followed the teachings of Jakob Amman starting from 1693 are the earliest members of the Amish we know today. Anabaptists are in favor of baptizing a person in their young adulthood, following a conscious decision of the person to be baptized. This is one of the major points which separate the Amish from other Christian religions. In the beginning of the 18th century Swiss and German Amish started to immigrate to the U.S. where they would settle on territory that is now known as Pennsylvania (Kephart, Zellner 6). Because German was the language of the Bible and religion, they became known as speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch, which is in fact German, but to outsiders, Deutsch i.e. German sounds very similar to Dutch.
The United States was a big uncharted territory, where land was cheap and plentiful. This is why the Amish were able to flourish during this time, because they could take whatever amount of land they needed for their crops and they could build houses for themselves and their children, who in turn could buy new land and make it their own. The relatively small number of families could rapidly grow into a fairly big community, which is when they were faced with the limits of the vast and prosperous lands. Some of the Amish were forced to move elsewhere, but the vast majority of them still reside in Pennsylvania, Ohio.