Why do we gawk at the Amish? After all, it’s not like they’re new in town. The Anabaptist sects of Lancaster County—the Old Order Amish and the similar-looking Mennonites and Brethren—have lived in Pennsylvania since the 1720s. But they only became a tourist attraction maybe 80 years ago.
For this, much of the credit goes to Havertown native Marguerite de Angeli, whose 1936 children’s book, Henner’s Lydia, put the Amish on the national tourist map. The book appeared at about the same time as a controversy over Amish schools that erupted the following year. In that case, the Pennsylvania Amish petitioned for—and eventually won—the right to be exempted from compulsory education after the eighth grade.
By downplaying the specifics of being Amish, de Angeli made the sect something even nonmembers could relate to. In the years since, millions have visited Lancaster County to experience how “their” ancestors used to live.
Born in Lapeer, Mich., as Marguerite Lofft, de Angeli was the daughter of a photographer and part-time illustrator who was skilled at his work—but less so at business. “We moved frequently,” wrote de Angeli in her autobiography, “sometimes to a better house, sometimes to one not so nice as the one we had left.”
Shadrach Lofft occasionally left town—once for Chicago, another time for New York—to find better work. But he always seemed to land back in Lapeer. Eventually, he went to work as a traveling salesman for Eastman Kodak. In 1902, he was assigned to Pennsylvania and moved his family to the Philadelphia area.
In high school, Marguerite took singing lessons, which led to paid positions as a contralto in the choirs of churches in Chester and Overbrook. She’d planned to attend Bryn Mawr College, but voice lessons conflicted with the necessary college prep work. “I decided that the singing lessons were more important to me,” she wrote.
At 19, she auditioned with producer Oscar Hammerstein, who offered her a position in his chorus. The job would’ve meant international travel and glamour. But her parents dissuaded her. In 1910, she married John Daily de Angeli, a salesman for the Edison Phonograph. Over 18 years, she bore six children. She continued to sing in church choirs and, in the early 1920s, began to explore illustration. After a little practice, de Angeli began to get commissions illustrating Presbyterian and Baptist Sunday School newspapers. Later came work for magazines.
During the Depression, this work sometimes fed the family. In 1935, using her own kids as models, de Angeli wrote and illustrated her first children’s book, Ted and Nina Go to the Grocery Store, followed quickly by Ted and Nina Have a Happy Rainy Day. Her editor, Margaret Lesser of Doubleday, took her to lunch to celebrate the books’ success, then left her with a suggestion: “How about a book on the Pennsylvania Dutch?”
Pennsylvania Dutch is a non-precise term for early German settlers (the “Deutsch”), who included members of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, as well as the Mennonites, Amish and others. For her book, de Angeli quickly decided to focus on the Amish because of their distinctive dress. Alas, she lived in Coatesville, had no idea where the Amish lived and didn’t own a car. Her brother agreed to take her on a business trip to Reading, dropping her off in Womelsdorf, Berks County, because it sounded Dutch. Directed to Lancaster County, she found a room in Morgantown and was introduced to a local physician with many Amish patients, who agreed to show her around.
De Angeli spent a morning at an Amish school, sketching the students and listening to their dialect. She noted the boys’ bowl haircuts, how the girls’ dresses extended down to their wrists and shoe tops, and how their bonnets and broad-brimmed hats hung on pegs at the rear of the classroom. She noticed that many were named Lydia or Yonie, and how the adults told them apart. (A boy whose father had a duck pond was “Duck Yonie.”) “There were 26 children,” she wrote. “And, if I remember correctly, 21 of them were named Stolzfus.”
When she sketched, no one objected. Not yet a tourist attraction, the Amish hadn’t developed their now-characteristic shyness. Her story focused on the fictional Lydia Stolzfus, whose father Henry (nicknamed Henner) promised her a buggy trip to Lancaster if she finished the small rug she was making. In the process, Henner’s Lydia copes with multiple chores and distractions, but eventually finishes the rug and is rewarded.
“De Angeli and others led Americans to believe that the Amish were like them, only better. As such, we took to them like ‘a new toothpaste,’ in the words of one commentator on the subject.”
Henner’s Lydia featured an illustration on every page. Even so, compared to modern children’s books, the story is a heavy read for young kids. Many of her paragraphs are as much as 70 words long and use words like “industrious.” The Cat in the Hat, by contrast, has just 231 words, and only one with as many as three syllables.
Regardless, the book was a hit—particularly among Lancaster booksellers. A shop at the bus station ordered them in bulk. An Amish grandfather bought 50 copies, one for each grandchild. Copycats followed. In 1937, the year after de Angeli’s book appeared, came The Amish of Lancaster County, the first of a still-unending stream of visitor-oriented booklets claiming to tell the truth about the sect. By 1939, the first Amish dolls, paperweights and other novelties were being marketed nationally. From 1939 to 1944, five more children’s books on Amish themes appeared. In 1950, one Lancaster merchant claimed to be selling 10,000 Amish dolls annually.
World War II slowed Amish tourism. But with peace came the deluge: From 1945 to 1960, car ownership in the United States grew 133%. The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, putting Lancaster County within easy reach of Philadelphia and other major cities.
In 1955, Plain and Fancy, a musical about an Amish barn raising and wedding, debuted on Broadway. That same year saw the appearance of the Amish Farm & House, Lancaster County’s first Amish tourist attraction. Dutch Wonderland amusement park followed in 1963. Visitor numbers to Lancaster County reached 2 million in 1960. In 2007, that number was up to 11 million.
De Angeli and others led Americans to believe that the Amish were like them, only better. As such, we took to them like “a new toothpaste,” in the words of one commentator on the subject.
And that’s why we gawk.
Taken from the archives of Mark E. Dixon’s Retrospect column, a fixture in Main Line Today for 16 years.
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