- Asia Tabb
AIRED; December 29, 2025
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Pennsylvania is home to some of the largest Amish communities in the world, but their roots in the state stretch back nearly three centuries. According to Steven M. Nolt, Ph.D., director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, the first documented Amish families arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1730s, coming through the Port of Philadelphia. “They come in the 1730s up through really roughly the time of the American Revolution,” Nolt said, first settling in what is now Berks County before gradually moving south into Lancaster County by the early 1800s, drawn in part by farmland availability and cost…