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I will try to write a few lines with a very sad breaking heart. John we still can’t believe that you have left us and most of all have let yourself down that far that you had to choose this very dangerous path. Never did we think or believe that you would choose that dangerous path in these last trying times.

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BERGHOLZ, Ohio -- Inside a one-room schoolhouse, Lizzie Mullet pulls her attention away from her students and focuses on the biggest issue facing them: their families. "We're doing the best we can to keep our spirits up, but we're worried about what will happen next," Mullet said.

Ethridge TN -- Diann Pollack isn’t exactly sure when the Amish first came to Ethridge. Some locals say it 1942. Others say 1944. “When I give a tour, I just say it was in the mid-1940s,” said Pollack, manager of the Amish Welcome Center along Highway 43 in Ethridge.

I was born and raised Amish. I was raised on a dairy farm in Mesopotamia, OH. I am in the middle of six boys, three older and three younger. My sister is the oldest and I was very sheltered. I don’t remember seeing a television until I was about sixteen or seventeen. When I was seventeen, I was allowed to date. That meant that I was allowed to go out all weekend and did not have to report to my parents. It was scary having been so sheltered my whole childhood and then suddenly be able to have the freedom to go out all weekend and not have to come home until early Monday morning.

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Mr Romney, who is trailing in the polls in Pennsylvania, should not pin too much hope on the Amish vote, though. Perhaps a thousand are registered to vote, I was told.

James Schwartz was raised in an Amish community in Michigan. In a segment on HuffPost Live, he shared his struggle to fit into this group when he realized he was gay. "If an Amish youth comes out to his parents and says 'I'm gay', then they really don't have any choice," he said. "They're going to have to leave. Unless they choose, of course, to stay in the closet."

An attorney for another woman, Lovina Miller, said she has eight children she works hard to support and wasn’t a flight risk because she travels by horse and buggy and has strong beliefs against air travel. Schrock and Lovina Miller were among the seven defendants the judge allowed to remain free.

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio - Dozens of dogs were pulled from what investigators called deplorable conditions on Monday. Ohio SPCA members from across the state gathered at an Amish farm in Pickaway County, where deputies said as many as 50 dogs were being neglected. Investigators arrived late Monday morning to serve a search warrant to the property owner.

On Tuesday, the ex-wife of Jeremiah Raber, one of the stars of TLC’s ‘Breaking Amish,’ spoke out about the new show calling it “fake.

A yearlong sting operation and a 5 a.m. armed SWAT team raid on an Amish farm in Pennsylvania may seem surprising to some, but the federal government deemed it necessary in order to stop the selling of illegal contraband to willing Washington, D.C. residents. The contraband: unpasteurized milk.

They needed money for a move to the city and drugs. So they donned gas masks, carried baseball bats and cruised through the rural roads of Berne in a faded-green Chevy Malibu looking to target horse-drawn buggies. On Monday, they hit up four of them.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An Ohio Amish man who fired a shot into the air that killed a 15-year-old girl driving a horse-drawn buggy more than a mile away will go to jail for 30 days, a prosecutor said Wednesday. As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Marion Yoder, 28, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor count of negligent homicide, said Steve Knowling, the prosecutor for Holmes County in northern Ohio.

Content with life, practice nearly 30 years after trial --- Solomon Wickey doesn’t remember much about his trial. At least, that’s what he says. Wickey puts his fingers to his lips and gazes down. His hair, in a traditional bowl cut, is a deep white now and his beard gray. He sits in a small chair in his office wearing a blue shirt and black pants that note his Amish heritage.

LAGRANGE COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) An Elkhart, Indiana woman is accused of burglarizing Amish homes in LaGrange County while the residents were attending church on Sundays.

In upstate New York, small farmers are being squeezed out by thousand-cow dairies and genetically modified crop producers. The buggy-driving members of a traditional sect may be hit hardest of all.

CLEVELAND -- Prosecutors will be able to tell jurors about alleged sexual "counseling" of Amish wives by a man charged with masterminding beard- and hair-cutting attacks on fellow Amish in Ohio, a federal judge ruled on Monday.

Esther Miller is a mother of six from Sugarcreek in the US state of Ohio. She is also a cowgirl and professional rodeo rider. Raised in a traditional Amish family where young girls did not join in such athletic pursuits, Esther always dreamed of barrel racing on horseback.

For years I have not agreed with our Amish belief. I think either the Preachers & Bishops don’t understand their German Bible or hold the Amish tradition higher than Jesus teachings.

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Oh, if younce could only break loose of Satan and come home. Deep in your hearts you’re not truly happy, and you never can be as long as you stay out in the world.

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The curious involvement of an Amish-Mennonite sect in a high-profile case of international parental kidnapping will be on display — and perhaps become clearer — in a courtroom in Burlington, Vt., this week.

A new census of the Amish population in the United States estimates that a new Amish community is founded, on average, about every 3 1/2 weeks, and shows that more than 60 percent of all existing Amish settlements have been founded since 1990.

Quick work by Amish church goers of the Northwest District at the farmstead of Neal Borntrager, 5570 Eagle Ave, Kalona, saved 12 horses from a building that caught fire about 10 a.m. Sunday.

A pregnant Amish woman picking berries in the woods near her Pennsylvania home was killed by lightning on her due date. The fetus also died.

BELLEFONTE — The young woman who robbed an Amish family’s store at gunpoint last year in Aaronsburg has pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement. Prosecutors will ask that Brittany Wingard, 20, of Aaronsburg, get three to seven years when a judge sentences her next month.

An Amish man failed to show how obtaining a permit for his new sawmill violates his religion, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. The 4th District Court of Appeals found Joni Borntreger's arguments too vague to conclude the permit requirements infringed on his beliefs and kicked his case back to the circuit court level. The ruling reversed a decision by Jackson County Circuit Judge Thomas E. Lister, who initially ordered Borntreger to pay a forfeiture before changing his mind and dismissing the case.

An Amish couple in a horse and buggy was held up at gunpoint Sunday by a bandit who pulled his car in front of the buggy and then drove off when the victims didn’t have any money, police said today.The attempted robbery occurred about 12:20 p.m. near the intersection of Holly Island Road and Bryants Corner Road in Hartly, Master Cpl. Gary Fournier said.

LANCASTER, Pa. — Daniel is a publicity-shy member of the Old Order Amish Church. But it thrills him to jump into an ambulance vibrating with wailing sirens and flashing lights. The 24-year-old Leacock Township father of two recently became certified as an emergency medical technician. For five years previously, he was a firefighter.

Amish farmers, whose beliefs stop them from inoculating their children but not their horses, thronged a first-ever free veterinary vaccination clinic this week to fend off a disease that has killed a dozen horses and a four-year-old girl.

FORT SCOTT, Kansas (Reuters) - The simple way of Amish life is a bit too simple for one Kansas county, which wants outhouses on their farms to be upgraded and an end to plowing raw human sewage into the fields. Officials in Bourbon County want Amish families to stop using outhouses unless they comply with codes requiring waste disposal tanks. That would be costly and unnecessary, say Amish homeowners.

GEAUGA COUNTY, Ohio – The Geauga County Sheriff’s Office is looking for two men who robbed two young Amish couples at gunpoint, at separate times, about 11 p.m. Sunday on Patch Road in Parkman. “The county sheriffs are doing a very good job of trying to track this down, and we really appreciate that,” said an Amish man driving by the robbery site in a buggy.