The History of Old Christmas Day – with Giveaway -- By Donna Schlachter

 

In my family, which hails from England and Ireland, one of our Christmas traditions was that the tree stayed up until Old Christmas Day, January 6th. We never understood why, simply that such was the rule. Gifts were opened on Christmas Day but stayed under the tree unless being played with or shown to visitors, of which there were many during that three-week period. While relatives came to our home on Boxing Day (December 26th), friends and close acquaintances knew that their invitation began after that, and on many evenings and Sundays, we’d either visit their house to see their decorations and gifts, or they’d come to our home.

 

Old Christmas Day, or Little Christmas as it’s known to Irish and Amish celebrants, is also called The Feast of the Epiphany by Catholics, the day to remember the wise men bringing gifts to Jesus. Christmas Day originally was celebrated on January 6th. The change came as a result of calendars and problems with them.

 

Pope Gregory XIII

Gregorian Calendar

The original calendar in popular use, the Roman calendar, used the phases of the moon as its basis. However, it wasn’t very accurate since they didn’t have a great understanding of our solar system at the time. So along came Julius Caesar, who agreed with astronomers of the time that the calendar should be based on our revolution around the sun. A calendar based on 365 1/4 days—the time it takes for Earth to travel around the sun one complete turn—was introduced. He divided this calendar into twelve months.

However, not everybody agreed on this new calendar, and indeed, a lot of confusion reigned in the known world because different countries followed different calendars. Plus, the Julian calendar wasn’t accurate, either. It was short by around eleven minutes. While that might not sound important, every 128 years there was an extra day.

Julius Caesar

In 1545, Pope Paul III began a project to find a solution to the problem. Almost eighty years later, using past experience and much research, astronomers and scholars calculated the true length of the solar year, reducing the new calendar by more than ten days. Due to these changes, the Spring Equinox was moved to March 21st, and the New Year on January 1st would finally standardize the beginning of the year. This new calendar was called the Gregorian calendar, but was still not universally accepted. For example, London was ahead of Paris by ten days because of the use of different calendars in the different countries. However, simply lopping eleven minutes off the solar year and changing the date wasn’t enough. Particularly because Protestant Europe wasn’t about to do anything Catholic Europe said.

In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that England fully adopted the Gregorian calendar. Since England was still days ahead of the rest of Europe, to make the switch, the British were told that on September 2nd, 1751, they should call it September 14th, and forget the days in between. Many protested, believing the Papists were trying to steal days from them. Part of their protest included continuing to celebrate Christmas Day on what was now January 6th. Many rioters flooded the streets, demanding their eleven days be returned.

For many years, December 25th was called New Christmas Day and January 6th was known as Old Christmas Day. The song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” begins on the first day of Christmas, December 25th, and ends on January 6th, the twelfth day.

Thankfully, our celebration of Old Christmas Day today can be more pleasant, but it’s a note that people haven’t really changed much in 250-plus years. We will want what we want, and are willing to speak up for changes we don’t agree with.

Giveaway: Leave a comment about your family’s Christmas traditions, and I will draw randomly for a print (US only) or ebook copy of Christmas Under the Stars, a western historical novel about mysterious accidents, mistaken identities, and the promise of Christmas. Check it out here



Resources:

https://christmas.365greetings.com/christmas-history/history-of-old-christmas-day.html

https://christmas-time.com/cp-old.html

https://www.theguidewnc.com/events/the-history-of-old-christmas/article_68c1f3ea-e4f6-11e7-83ce-9353a5558624.html

About Christmas Under the Stars:

November 1858, Utah Territory: Edie Meredith strives to keep her temper and her tongue under control as she heads west with her brother to California. Raised in an itinerant preacher family, she promises she will never marry a man of the cloth. Tom Aiken, drover of the wagon train, longs to answer his true calling: to preach, and while he realizes not every woman would choose a preacher for a husband, he hopes to soon find his help-meet. Suspicious ‘accidents’ plague their journey. Is someone trying to keep them from reaching their destination? Or will misunderstanding and circumstances keep them apart?



 

 

About Donna:
Donna writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of
Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, and non-fiction books. She is a member of ACFW, Writers on the Rock, SinC, Pikes Peak Writers, and CAN; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests.

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Amana Village Life – with giveaway -- by Donna Schlachter

The General Store from Wikipedia

Amana Colonies from Wikipedia

The Amana Colonies in Iowa were founded in 1854 by a closed sect of Christians who originally came from Germany. However, after many years of persecution in Europe, they emigrated first to New York, just outside Buffalo. They enjoyed a communal lifestyle, maintaining their commercial and provisional independence as much as possible. The tract of land they purchased in New York was owned by the Colony, and was originally called Ebenezer.

However, the city of Buffalo grew rapidly, and by the early 1850’s, the community was almost surrounded completely. They sent an advisory team west to find new land on which to settle. The decision was made to purchase land near Homestead, Iowa, and six communities were plotted out. A few years later, when the railroad came to Homestead, they purchased the entire town so they could have access to the rail for shipping goods in and out.

Each colony operated under similar rules, and each colony had its own board of elders called the Bruderrath. The Amanites kept themselves to themselves, but occasionally hired an outsider to live and work in their community as need arose. Sometimes this included a blacksmith, laborers, or folks with special skills. Housing was provided to these outsiders, who also ate in the communal kitchens in each colony.

Life was simple in the colonies. Each person had their job to do, and was expected to do it as the entire community relied on them. Laundry was dropped off at each colony’s wash room, where it was cleaned, ironed if need be, then picked up later. The kitchens were ruled by a Kȕchebaas and several helpers, and provided three meals and two snacks per day. There were no cooking facilities in the houses.

Under their original structure, marriage was frowned upon as a weakness of the flesh, but in time they came to understand the need to continue the community, and so permitted marriage. Families lived together until they, too, left home to wed.

They lived a true communal existence, in that nobody owned anything in their own name, including homes or equipment. Any monies earned by sales of products or labor to the outside world were pooled within the community. Each person was given an annual allotment of money, and was expected to spend it within the community store.

Church services were held Sunday morning and every evening, and men sat on one side, women and children on the other. Weddings were held as part of a regular service, and the couple didn’t send invitations. Instead, they traveled from colony to colony to invite folks to the wedding.

When a baby was born, the mother could stay home for two years, at which time the child was enrolled in a care program half days, and the mother returned to work half days. At the age of five, the child began attending school, at which time, the mother returned to work full time. The work and school weeks ran six days a week, with the Sabbath, or day of rest, being the only free day.

Marriage to an outsider was not permitted, and divorce was never an option. If one spouse had a problem with the other, they went to the Bruderrath for advice and counsel.

In 1932, The Great Change, as it is referred to, relaxed many of the rules regarding the way of life, and the communal life was ended. Colonists purchased houses, ran their own businesses, and kept their own profits or salaries. However, the Amana Colonies still exist with many of the original buildings now re-purposed for commercial use. The Great Change also ended the religious aspect of the colonies, propelling them into a secular form of government.

The current colonies enjoy a great tourist trade, and the museum is a treasure-trove of history. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop by! It’s in the neighborhood of Highway 6 and 151, just north of Highway 80 near Iowa City.

Leave a comment and be entered into a drawing for an ebook version of A Nurse for Caleb, as a special pre-release gift.

Welcome sign from Amana Colony website

Resources:

https://amanacolonies.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amana_Colonies



About A Nurse for Caleb (releases September 3, 2020):

In 1868, Tessa, a Mennonite nurse graduates from nursing school and is assigned to the Amana Colonies in Iowa because of her expertise in treating asthma and other breathing problems. As a former student at a women's medical school, she knows more than most about respiratory diseases. She's also had her fair share of heartbreak when, upon her mentor's death, she was forced to abandon her dream of becoming a doctor. Will she be able to use her skills? Or will her gender keep her from helping those who truly need her?

Seth, a widower in Amana, is still nursing a broken heart from his sweetheart's passing two years before. Now raising their invalid son Seth on his own, he wonders why God didn't listen to his prayers for healing for his family. Caleb has been afflicted with the same form of asthma that killed Anna, and Seth stands by helplessly as his son fades away. Can he trust God and trust medicine, or is faith in one mutually exclusive of faith in the other?


About Donna:

Donna writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, and non-fiction books. She is a member of ACFW, Writers on the Rock, SinC, Pikes Peak Writers, and CAN; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests. www.HiStoryThruTheAges.com

A BIT OF AMISH HISTORY

Historical Amish people didn’t dress or behave that differently from a lot of other farmers in the 1800s. 

 

    However, they did strongly adhere to religious beliefs like a lot of other religious groups did and still do, but there weren’t as many technological advances for them to abstain from to highlight their differences. Until the mid 20th century, children of the Amish attended public schools with the other non-Amish children. Some still do.

   A lot of people think of the Amish as an ethnic people group like Australian, French, or Greek, but Amish is a religion like Baptist, Methodist, or Catholic. Just because a child is born into a home with Christian parents doesn’t make the child a Christian. Same with Amish. There are no Amish children, per se, but rather, children of Amish. When a young person decides to become a church member, that is when they become Amish.
   So where did the Amish people and religion come from?
 
THE OLD COUNTRY
   The Amish religion started as a split (or schism) in the Mennonite movement which stemmed from the Anabaptist reform movement in Europe. Anabaptist was a new belief held by a radical Protestant sect that believed baptism should only occur for believing adults after they have made a decision to follow Christ Jesus.
   The Mennonite movement was a reform movement with origins in the Anabaptist movement based on teachings by Menno Simons (1496-1561). Within the Mennonites, Jacob Ammann’s (1644-1730) teachings became the basis for the Amish movement that took a version of his name. The word Amish was first used as a term of disgrace in 1710.

THE NEW COUNTRY
   Amish began emigrating to North America early in the 18th century. Like many other people, some of the Amish came for religious freedom, first to Pennsylvania, then spreading to other states like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and others.
   As the Amish communities grew, they split to better accommodate the members. Some groups split due to religious differences. They disagreed over whether to permit things like social change and technological innovations into their communities.
   Most if not all of the Amish groups left in Europe assimilated into Mennonite communities.
 
DIFFERENT AMISH GROUPS
 

   As there are now, back in the 1800s, there were different types of Amish groups.
    ~Old Order Amish, the most conservative subgroups belong to this group, then and now.
    ~New Order Amish, less conservative and include some Amish Mennonites.
    ~Mennonite, most progressive.
   Most of the difference seem to be around which technology innovations are permissible to use, from indoor plumbing to electricity and machinery. The mainstays of the Amish way of life have long since been humility, family, community, and separation from the world.
 

   Each district (or community) has its own set of rules to follow. These rules are called the Ordnung. The Ordnung is why an Amish person in one area might have had a pump inside the house and another didn’t or whether to allow its people to make clothes with printed fabrics. In modern times, it would be the difference from pulling a plow with a horse while another might be using a tractor, or one Amish person riding a bicycle, while another uses a scooter.

   Though Amish determine to be separate from the world and not depend on it for living, they aren’t as removed and independent as they would like, for they sell their crops and homemade goods to the outside world. I believe in this day and age with technology running the world and farmland more and more scarce, Amish are finding it harder and harder to remain apart.

NEW!
COURTING HER PRODIGAL HEART

Mother-to-Be’s Amish Homecoming... Pregnant and alone, Dori Bontrager is sure her Amish kin won’t welcome her—or the child she’s carrying—into the community. And she’s determined that her return won’t be permanent. As soon as she finds work, she’ll leave again. But with her childhood friend Eli Hochstetler insisting she and her baby belong here, will Dori’s path lead back to the Englisher world…or into Eli’s arms?

(Book 3 in the Prodigal Daughter's contemporary series) 

MARY DAVIS is a bestselling, award-winning novelist of over two dozen titles in both historical and contemporary themes. She has five titles releasing in 2018; "Holly & Ivy" in A Bouquet of Brides Collection in January, Courting Her Amish Heart in March, The Widow’s Plight in July, Courting Her Secret Heart September, & “Zola’s Cross-Country Adventure” in MISSAdventure Brides Collection in December. Coming in January 2019, Courting Her Prodigal Heart. She is a member of ACFW and active in critique groups.

Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of over thirty-four years and two cats. She has three adult children and one incredibly adorable grandchild. Find her online at:
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The Moravians: John Heckewelder

John Heckewelder

This is the third and final post in my series on the Moravian missionaries to the Native Americans during the 18th and early 19th centuries. These men and women were saints of sturdy faith, indeed, and they suffered many trials in their devotion to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like all humans, they also had flaws, as we’d expect. When he was only a youth, the subject of today’s post, John Heckewelder, went to the Muskingum River in Ohio in the spring of 1762 as Christian Frederick Post’s assistant in his mission to the Delaware Indians in the Ohio Territory. Like John Mark, the young man who accompanied Paul and Silas on their first missionary journey only to turn back when the going got tough, Heckewelder fled that fall when the Indians became increasingly hostile toward the Whites. At the end of the year, however, with the conflict known as Pontiac’s War looming, threats against Post’s life finally forced him to flee as well.

Heckewelder spent the rest of his life as a missionary among the Delaware at a crucial period of their history, while they were progressively being driven from their lands in Pennsylvania into Ohio, and eventually to Ontario. His book, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, which published in 1818, is a classic work that offers readers and historians insights into the history and lives of the Delaware even today. I own a copy of it myself and am using it to do research for my historical series.

Moravian Baptism of Indian Converts

Heckewelder was born in England in 1743. His parents were German Moravians, and in 1754 they moved their family to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the Moravian Church in North America. Young Heckewelder grew up among fellow believers who ministered to the Delaware living along the Susquehanna and Allegheny rivers. Heckewelder’s parents apprenticed him to a cooper as a boy, but in 1762 he accompanied Post on his journey into the Ohio Territory as his assistant. Under Post’s guidance and later that of David Zeisberger, Heckewelder lived among the Delaware Indians throughout the 1760s and 1770s, becoming fluent in their language and intimately acquainted with their culture.

After the French and Indian War, the colonists in Pennsylvania were hostile toward all Indians because of the devastating raids they had suffered. English settlers and soldiers also continued to move into the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains claimed by the Indians, pushing the original inhabitants ever farther west. In the early 1760s a Delaware prophet named Neolin came to prominence. He told of a vision in which the Master of Life had commanded him to call the Indians to abandon the ways of the Whites and cast them out of the Ohio lands, which he had given to them. Only then would they gain the blessing of the Master of Life, and he would restore their power and prosperity. In 1763, under the influence of this teaching, many of the tribes renewed their attacks against the English, led by the Ottawa leader Pontiac and the Seneca leader Guyasuta in a war that came to be known as Pontiac’s War. The Moravian missionaries and their Indian converts, who like the Quakers and Amish were nonresistant, found themselves under suspicion—and often attack—by both the English and the Indians.

Gnadenhutten Massacre

The American Revolution made their situation even worse. Although the Moravians remained neutral, the Americans suspected them of aiding the British because they would not fight on their side. At the same time the British accused Heckewelder and Zeisberger of treason, claiming they passed intelligence from the Indians to the American rebels. The two missionaries were arrested and hauled in front of British officers at Detroit and held there for months. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers in Pennsylvania’s militia brutally murdered 96 unarmed Indian converts, including women and children, at the village of Gnadenhutten.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Heckewelder assisted in reestablishing the Moravian Indian refugees from Pennsylvania in Ohio after the war. He also was instrumental as a negotiator between the Indian communities and the new United States government. After his retirement, he returned to Bethlehem, but continued to occasionally work as an interpreter and agent for the Indians for some years. He devoted his greatest energies to writing, however. He published 3 books between 1818 and his death in 1823, which were based on his intimate knowledge of the Delaware. Leading scholars sought him out for details of the Indians’ languages, customs, and legends. He essentially served as a bridge between his generation, who grew up while the Indians still inhabited Pennsylvania and other eastern states, and new generations whose only knowledge of the aboriginal peoples came from history books.

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in April 2017. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

Amish Dress in the 18th Century

I live in Amish country—to be specific, Elkhart County in northern Indiana, the second largest Amish settlement in the country. Growing up Mennonite with many Amish relatives, and living in this community, has given me a pretty good look into their lives and customs. You might assume that since the Amish cling to tradition, their style of dress has always remained the same, but you’d be mistaken. Just like everyone else, the lifestyle of the Amish has undergone a lot of changes over the centuries, including the way they dress. Just over my lifetime styles have changed noticeably, although it’s happened much more slowly than in the outer culture.

When I started doing research for the Northkill Amish Series, which I’m writing with bestselling author Bob Hostetler, it quickly became obvious that we needed to describe our characters and what they’re wearing. To my dismay I discovered that there’s very little information available about Amish clothing in the eighteenth century, the period during which our series is set. Mennonite Attire through Four Centuries by Melvin Gingerich is the only detailed resource I found on the subject, but although it’s helpful, it doesn’t include much specific information about Amish fashion in the mid-eighteenth century. So I had to make some educated guesses. Happily I chanced across the images of the 18th century Swiss Anabaptist man and woman to the left and below right. The clothes they’re wearing would be very close to what the Amish wore during the same period, except for the stripes on the woman’s apron. They may be Mennonites, who were a bit more fancy in their dress.

One thing I learned was that when the Amish broke away from the Mennonites in Europe at the end of the 17th century, they continued wearing much the same general style of clothing as the common rural people of the Alsace, the Palatinate, and other parts of Europe where they lived. In fact, the dress of Amish women is very similar to examples from the 17th and 18th centuries displayed in Palatine museums. Because of their beliefs, they chose to dress much more plainly and modestly, however, and to adopt little, if anything, from the ever-changing fashion scene. Colors remained very somber, and no adornments such as stripes or figures on the fabric, jewelry, ribbons, and shoe buckles were allowed. Of course, when the Amish emigrated to America they brought their style of clothing with them.

Like the majority of colonial men, Amish men would have worn a long linen shirt that also served as nightwear, a waistcoat, and knee breeches, with long hose and plain shoes as you see above. A dress coat was added for formal occasions such as attendance at church. Once they married, they were required to grow a beard.

Since women had to cook over open fires and do other labor, they wore a plain mid-calf-length petticoat with a separate bodice that pinned together down the front, and a pinner apron like the one worn by the woman in the painting on the left. Under this they wore a shift that did double duty as a nightgown, hose, and plain shoes. (Colonial women wore stays to support the bosom and back and to provide the right shape for their gowns, but I have no idea whether Amish women did so.) Over their bodice, they wore a Halsduch or neck cloth that covered the neck and bosom, which you can see both in this painting and in Wybrand Hendriks’ portrait of a Dutch milkmaid below right. In cold weather they would wear a shawl. A fitted white or black linen cap called a Haube, similar to the cap the old woman seated at the table in the last painting, by Adriaan de Lelie, wears but lacking a ruffle, covered their hair, which was pinned behind the head in a bun.

In the summer when they went outside, just like their colonial neighbors Amish women wore wide-brimmed straw hats with low crowns, which they set right atop their cap. These were called scoops because of the shape that resulted from passing a ribbon or cord over the crown and tying it under the chin, thus pulling the brim down over the ears. Amish men and women both wore flat black beaver hats, called in German Flamma deckle, during the cold months, and when needed, they tied the brims down on the sides to keep their ears warm or prevent them from blowing off.

Bonnets came into fashion in the early 19th century, but it wasn’t until the mid 1800s that Amish districts slowly began to allow women to wear them. Gingrich cites examples of Amish mothers who on their deathbeds pleaded with their daughters to promise never to wear this outrageous headgear, but to little effect. Bonnets took over, and today Amish women still wear them. One of my cousins who was raised Amish told me that she absolutely hated wearing the silly things, and she had a good laugh when I told her that they were once banned. How things do change, and perhaps one day the Amish will transition to something else!

Clothing became an important factor in why the Amish clung to the dress styles they brought with them from Europe instead of adopting new fashions as the society around them did. In America the Amish found themselves for the first time conscious that their clothing was distinctly different from their neighbors on the frontiers where they settled—the Scottish-Irish, Huguenot, Quakers, and English. Traditional Amish dress served to immediately identify those who were members of the community. Over time, it also served as a hedge against the pressure to change in ways could eventually cause the Amish community to go out of existence.

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is a descendant of Jacob Hochstetler’s oldest son John. An author, editor, and publisher, she is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

The Northkill Amish Settlement

I was raised Mennonite by parents who grew up Amish, which naturally gave me a great interest in all things Amish and Mennonite. Last month I posted about the origins of the Amish in America and the Northkill Amish Series Bob Hostetler and I are writing. Northkill and The Return, which releases this November, are fictional accounts closely based on the inspiring true story of our Hochstetler ancestors who emigrated from Europe and settled on the Pennsylvania frontier with other members of their church.

Northkill Creek near the former Hochstetler farm

This month, we’re going to take a look at the Northkill Amish Church, named for the creek that wound through the settlement,. It was the earliest known Amish church organized in this country. Like other Anabaptist groups, the Amish suffered severe persecution in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries because of their insistence on believers’ baptism and refusal to do military service. So William Penn’s assurances of religious freedom and economic opportunity in his colony attracted many Amish believers as well as Mennonites, the group they broke away from.

18th Century Amish Man

The Northkill Creek watershed, 75 miles northwest of Philadelphia, was opened for settlement in 1736. That year two Amish men, Melchior Detweiler and Hans Seiber, settled along the creek in the northwestern part of Berks County. Other members of their church followed the next year. My great-great-great-great-great grandfather Jacob Hochstetler, his wife, and two small children, joined them at the end of 1738 with more church members. The church formally organized in 1740, and when still more Amish arrived in 1742, it grew large enough to petition the Pennsylvania General Assembly for naturalization rights, which allowed them to purchase their land. Bishop Jacob Hertzler arrived in 1749 to provide leadership for the growing congregation.

The land they settled occupied a lovely part of the Great Valley. Small, rounded hills shoulder one another, and brooks meander through the little valleys between the hills. Unfortunately, the Amish chose an extremely vulnerable position. The settlement lies at the foot of the Blue Mountain, which runs along the very edge of the legal boundary of English settlements, according to treaties with the Native Americans. However, white settlers continued to pour over the mountains into territory claimed by the French and their native allies, which caused tensions between France and England to rise to the breaking point.

18th Century Amish Woman

Although the Blue Mountain hemmed the Northkill settlement in on the north, gaps in the ridge weakened this natural defense. Hostilities broke out in 1754, with the French enlisting the Indians to attack the border settlements in a conflict that became known in this country as the French and Indian War. Soon bands of Indian warriors descended through the mountain gaps, raiding the farms, burning houses and barns, driving away cattle, and killing settlers or taking them captive. The Amish, like the Quakers and the Moravians, found that their belief in nonresistance did not save them from the raids since the Indians did not take account of their enemies’ religious beliefs. Over 200 settlers were killed in Berks County alone. The attack against my ancestors’ farm early on the morning of September 20, 1757, was one of those horrific incidents.

The Northkill settlement included nearly 200 families at its height. It remained the largest Amish settlement in America into the 1780s, when it slowly declined as families moved westward in search of better farmland. Although it existed for only a brief period, this settlement was fundamental in establishing the Amish in North America. Settlers included the progenitors of many widespread Amish families, such as Yoders, Burkeys, Troyers, Hochstetlers (or Hostetlers), and Hershbergers.

My ancestor Jacob Hochstetler is the subject of Harvey Hostetler’s groundbreaking book The Descendants of Jacob Hochstetler. In addition to listing the genealogy of thousands of Jacob’s descendents, this book includes a detailed history of the religious persecution the Amish suffered in Europe, their immigration to America in the 1700s, the attack on the Hochstetler farm, and the kidnapping and subsequent escape of Jacob and his sons.

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is a descendant of Jacob Hochstetler’s oldest son John. An author, editor, and publisher, she is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year. Check out her website at http://www.jmhochstetler.com/.

Origins of the Amish in America and Giveaway!

I’m delighted to join the Heroes, Heroines, and History Blog this month, and I hope to contribute some interesting posts. My main project for the past several years has been a sprawling historical fiction series on the American Revolution, The American Patriot Series. In 2014, however, a distant cousin, multi-published author Bob Hostetler, and I released Northkill, Book 1 of our Northkill Amish Series, closely based on the inspiring true story of our Hochstetler ancestors. Book 2, The Return, which releases in November 2016, completes their story.

Amish romances have been popular for years, but Northkill recounts a different kind of Amish story, one very well known among the Amish and Mennonites. Jacob Hochstetler and his family arrived in Philadelphia on November 9, 1738, aboard the ship Charming Nancy at the beginning of a tidal wave of German immigration that stretched over the following century. With other members of their church, they sought sanctuary from religious persecution in Europe and the freedom to live and worship according to their Anabaptist beliefs, including the doctrine of nonresistance. They settled on the Pennsylvania frontier between the white settlements and Indian country and built a home along the Northkill Creek, for which their community was named.

Our story begins in 1752, when rumors of the building conflict between the French and the British over control of the continent reach the Northkill community. Over the next few years, this conflict boils over into war. Then early on the morning of September 20, 1757, the Hochstetlers’ peaceful way of life is brutally shattered when their farm is attacked by a party of Delaware and Shawnee warriors allied with the French. Their home is set ablaze, and when they fight their way out of the cellar where they took shelter, the Indians kill the mother and two children and carry Jacob and two sons away into captivity. After several months Jacob makes a harrowing escape, but it will be years later, after the war’s end, before he finally succeeds in bringing his boys home.

Many shorter works along and another fictional series have been based on this story over the years. Bob and I wanted to write an in-depth, detailed depiction of our ancestors’ lives on the Pennsylvania frontier, centered on the deeply rooted faith of the Northkill Amish community, which is generally thought to be the first Amish church established in America. Amazingly a great many facts about this attack are documented in contemporary publications and records preserved in the Pennsylvania State Archives and in private collections. And in the late 1800s family researchers began to collect oral accounts passed down through the family. More recently, members of the Jacob Hochstetler Family Association uncovered additional facts that were invaluable in writing our fictional portrayal.

My posts over the next few months will focus on the world of the Northkill Amish, the French and Indian War, and the Native American tribes that held three of my ancestors captive. Theirs is a deeply inspiring story of steadfast faith, courage in the midst of tragedy, and God’s unfailing love. I hope it will bless you as much as it has Bob and me.

Today I’m giving away a copy of Northkill to one lucky reader, either print or ebook edition. To be entered in the drawing, please leave a comment on this post and include your email addy and which edition you’d like to receive.

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J. M. Hochstetler is a descendant of Jacob Hochstetler’s oldest son, John. An author, editor, and publisher, she is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year. You will find her at http://www.jmhochstetler.com/.