1951 Animal Friends and Visitors

1951  Animal Friends and Visitors. Buster, Patsy, and Sally. Sunday fellowship meetings at Beechvale; A.A. M. becomes associate editor of Herald der Wahrheit; Andrew goes to second Amish Mission Conference at Nottawa, Michigan, and visitors Russell Maniaci, Gertrude Enders Huntington, John A. Hostetler, and Alma Kauffman; James born on December 24.

Farm animals were a part of my life from my earliest memory, and I always thought I would be a farmer, mainly to be around animals. In the early fifties our main childhood animal was Buster, but I thought of him more as lower level member of the family. I don’t recall ever being without Buster as a young child. Buster was a large Collie and Shepherd mixed breed. He would eat meat, old bread and table scraps of all kinds, and I don’t recall that we ever bought commercial dog food. Sometimes we even handed him vegetables and fruit such as carrots or apples, and Buster would graciously nibble at them, not because he liked them, but simply to be courteous. 

For this against expectations behavior, Buster entered our family lexicon; to be a Buster was to do something out of family courtesy and loyalty, even though you may not wish to do it. Later in life I learned that dogs are actually omnivores, like humans, so maybe the vegetable eating was not that unusual but I still liked the thought. You could lie down on Buster and he was warm and friendly. You could even tell him your complaints, and he would understandingly and sympathetically look you right in the eyes; my father Andrew regularly addressed Buster as his personal friend: “He’s a dogatee, and a dogatee.”

But he was also our protector. When our neighbors Eli Weaver and later Bill Millers’ dog would come to our place Buster would fight with them in the lawn until our parents and the neighbors settled them down. Then both dogs like some unbeaten boxers would eye each other from their corners. Buster was our watch dog and unlike the rest of us, not a nonresistant pacifist; Buster believed in police work, if intruders, peddlers, or any unknowns, arrived and no one was at home, Buster would not let them on the porch. Even when we were home, when strangers came to our place and they appeared to be unfriendly and tried to come too close to us as children, Buster would stand between the stranger and us. The hair on the back would stand up, and you could hear a deep sustained low growl. If my Father or Mother told Buster all was okay, he would soon lie down on the porch and was asleep. But without my parents' approval, he would stand his ground, and I don’t know of any case where someone went past him. In fact, I don’t remember any time that he actually attacked a human either. But I always thought he would have if we would have been violated. He was our enforcer and protector.

And then sadly Buster became old, short-tempered and hard of hearing. One of the saddest days of my boyhood was when Buster’s eyes watered constantly, and he lost his mind and snapped at little James, or maybe it was one of the girls. Our parents said that Buster had to go. We took him back down behind the railroad tracks to near Salt Creek, and my father took the 22 rifle along, and that was the last day of Buster’s life. We buried him in the sand along Salt Creek. Several years later, I read the children’s novel Old Yeller (1956). I cried through much of that book because I was reliving our life with Buster. In the story’s ending, Old Yeller dies, and then a young puppy comes along, providing the reader some consolation. But for me, although we later had other good dogs, there was only one Buster who taught me about loyalty and mortality.   

Patsy was our pony, and certainly not a Buster. She was a cute, chunky Shetland pony who could be ridden or driven with our cart. We did not often ride her because when she walked, it was slowly, and her cantering was very bumpy, and when we finally got her to gallop (which she did not like to do), it was hard to keep her going. The additional issue with Patsy was her stubbornness; if she did not want to go, she just stood there until we really kicked her in the ribs or gave several cracks on her rump. So we would drive her with the pony cart which our father had converted from a low milk can cart. He replaced the handles for a pony shaft in which to hitch Patsy. Andrew never replaced the rubber balloon tires on the store-bought milk cart turned pony cart which became a church issue, bringing a visit from the Amish ministers. So Andrew explained to them that the tires were not air filled but simply rubber without inner tubes. That seemed okay.

Patsy then became our boys’ transportation, and we often took others on rides and drove her to town. On roads she was pretty good, but if we took her into a soft field, or near a plowed field especially, which was comfortable, she would simply lie down, even try to roll over, and refuse to go. One additional element of Patsy was that she was a mare, and we wanted to raise little ponies. We would take Patsy to our neighbor Albert Miller (Jockey Bert) who had energetic young studs who eagerly mounted up on Patsy, for me some early sex education. For all our efforts in getting Patsy bred with Albert’s little studs, she never took. Whether she simply was unable to have little ones or whether she was too fat, we were never sure. One final positive thing about stubborn Patsy which probably saved her long tenure during our boyhood: she did not kick or bite us.

Then there was Sally, a young Holstein heifer, which as a calf we trained to pull the pony cart. We trained and tamed Sally so we would put her in Patsy’s harness, and we would hitch her to the cart. She became somewhat of a town celebrity when we drove her through Holmesville's streets. Sally’s harness and cart career however only lasted for a summer; she soon became too big, was bred as a heifer, and had her first calf; she became a dairy cow. 

  

Other animals were what we called projects. These were small animals which we raised in hopes of making a little money. Our parents allowed us to have a number of rabbits, ducks and little chickens called bantams or banty. These projects did make a little money, but only because, as our parents generously reminded us, we did not pay for the feed. We often got the rabbits from the Rudy Coblentz’s because they raised quite a few. The Muscovy ducks we got at auctions and raised them. We did not have a pond for them, and Salt Creek was too far away, so the ducks would hiss and sit and poop in the driveway, making them probably Andrew and Mattie’s least favorite projects.

Rabbits and banty fowl could be sold at the Wooster poultry auction, or sometimes we would just take them to the Holmesville and Fredricksburg auctions. One time we took bantams to Fredricksburg for an evening auction, and for some reason, probably sheer mischievousness, we released the banty fowl to go wild on the Main Street of the small town. Days afterward when we traveled through Fredricksburg, we thought we saw a few of our fowl still roaming about the streets. It became a kind of brothers' joke to look for them--long after they had disappeared. Andrew sometimes good-naturedly complained about our projects eating all the feed, but Mattie was generally indulgent about them—as long as we helped her in the garden, with fruit picking and canning and in the house with drying dishes.

For my father Andrew this was a very busy year not only as a farmer and a bookstore manager, he was also writer and leader in an Amish mission movement. Already since the mid-forties, he wrote regular articles for Herald der Wahrheit (a German and English language fortnightly of the Amish and conservative Mennonites) and other magazines, and during this year he was named associate editor of the German section of the Herald, a position he would serve until 1956.

That spring and summer Andrew’s interest in greater Christian witness, personal Bible study and moral improvement among the Amish and especially the young people led him to organize Sunday afternoon Bible classes at the Beechville school house near Benton. These fellowship meetings were during the summer when the public school classes were not in session. We held them on the alternate “off Sundays” when there was no regular Amish church service. Andrew kept a small brown notebook of the classes, noting attendance, (often between 20 and 45) along with biblical text, and offering and some notes.

On August 12, Andrew notes that “some regulars not present today, and we miss them. Some opposition in evidence making us more humble and to pray more. Interest in general very good. Weather fair and warm. Amish boys playing ball on grounds caused some annoyance and concern.”  Andrew sometimes invited ministers to speak at these Bible studies, but mostly it was a movement of young adults with similar interests. I remember especially the Church and Sunday School Hymnal singing of the large and talented Joe and Susan Coblentz family's youth and their friends. They all seemed to have beautiful voices, matching the young women’s faces.   

Given this local background and his writings, Andrew was poised to become a key player in a mid-western Amish stirring, what was called the Amish Mission Movement. Strange as it may seem today, there was a period of time during the 1950s when the Amish sponsored mission projects, allowed young people to go to college, and supported mission and service workers as far away as Puerto Rico, Mississippi and Germany. To stimulate the movement they published a monthly publication called Amish Mission Endeavor and convened an annual national mission conference. The initial catalyst for the movement was a Detroit machinist and lapsed Catholic named Russell Maniaci (1895-1972). He had read some mainly inaccurate newspaper stories of the Amish and believed that he had discovered the true biblical Christians. As a step in their direction, he converted to the Mennonites, and moved his family to Elkhart, Indiana, where he became active in mission work. 

But as historian Steven Nolt writes, “Through it all he credited his conversion to the Amish—and therein lay his biggest disappointment.” If the inaccurate news stories of the Amish got Maniaci interested in the Amish, the truth of their disinterest in evangelical mission activity and gaining converts such as himself combined with the rowdy goings on of some of their young people made him want to convert them! He organized the first Amish Mission Conference on a Kalona, Iowa, farm August 6-8, 1950. Manaici publicized the meeting by sending out the Amish Mission Endeavor Newsletter to several hundred addresses of Amish ministers. The free periodical was not welcomed by all, however, and soon a note would appear above the address label, apparently expecting some opposition: “Please do not tear this until you have read it.”

 

But my father Andrew welcomed it, and by 1951, Andrew attended the second Amish Mission Conference held at the Chris Stauffer farm near Nottawa, Michigan (just across the Indiana state border from the Elkhart and LaGrange County), September 2-4.

Here Andrew was thoroughly at home, meeting people who had similar interests, many of whom already met him earlier in his writing, although his several names (Andrew A., A.A., and Andy) apparently could cause some confusion.  A.J. Beachy of Kalona, Iowa, wrote to him shortly afterwards: “I well remember the name. A.A. Miller. When I met you in the conference in Michigan, it was Andy Miller of Holmes County, and I never once thought that this is the same brother that we are appointing as assistant editor [of Herald der Wahrheit] until on the way home I looked through my book, and here I had his signature, A. A. Miller, Holmesville, Ohio. Then I wished I had taken a little more time to talk with you.” Beachy also reminded Andrew that it was his neighbor Joseph G. Gingerich (who had since died) who had invited Andrew to Scottdale, Pennsylvania, some four years earlier [1947] to work as a Mennonite Publishing House German typesetter and editor. 

The organizers invited Andrew to give an invocation prayer on Monday morning early in the conference, and he presented a talk on mission work at home on Tuesday afternoon. Anna Beiler’s notes in the Amish Mission Endeavor Bulletin quoted and summarized Andrew’s talk: “My thoughts have taken me to the two disciples who witnessed the transfiguration mountain top experience, but we can’t stay on the mountain. We must go home and start from there our mission work. Satan strikes at the home, at the church and at the nation.” Anna Beiler concluded that “Brother Miller gave out many good points based on Mark 5:19; 1 Timothy 5:8 and Acts 2:10.” By the end of the sessions, Andrew was named to an eight-member steering committee, charged with planning future conferences and also to give some organization to this mission movement.    

Andrew was stimulated in meeting like-minded Amish people from across North America. At the Michigan conference, people from seven states were represented. Andrew also enjoyed meeting people from varied background or as he and Mattie sometimes called them outsiders. The Italian immigrant Maniaci (we simply called him Ma-na-see) would have been of this kind of interest. But others less than full outsiders, also came calling at our house. The young Quaker and Yale graduate student Gertrude Enders Huntington arrived at Sugarcreek, Ohio, near Aunt Clara and Noah E. Miller where she would live several months at a time among Amish families over a five-year period till 1956.

Enders Huntington’s doctoral dissertation “Dove at the Window” was the result of her living and study. She would stop at Andrew’s bookstore and visit and often follow up with a letter, sometimes giving him additional historical background on a topic they had discussed—such as a quote by Menno Simons on “anti-secrecy.” She also included an order for a Dietrich Philip “Enchiridion or Hand Book” for one of her professors.  Roland Bainton did major studies on the Sixteenth century reformation and on the Anabaptists, as well as writing the influential Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace.  

Another visitor, not an outsider to us, was the young John A. Hostetler now at Mennonite Publishing House at Scottdale, Pennsylvania. Hostetler was also of Amish background, having grown up among the Amish of Kishacoquillas (Big Valley) of Pennsylvania and Kalona, Iowa, and had earned a doctorate in rural sociology at Penn State University. Now he was wanting to change public perceptions of the Amish community. Tourism was still in its very early stages in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but the popular and garish books by Ammon Monroe Aurand Jr. focusing on the exotic customs such as bundling and hex signs were inaccurate and what Hostetler called “foul, filthy and obscene.” So the annoyed and offended Hostetler decided to write his own description of the Amish especially for the beginnings of the Pennsylvania Amish tourist market.

The next year (1952) Herald Press published his Amish Life, and others would soon follow, such as Mennonite Life and Hutterite Life. During one of Hostetler’s visits, Andrew especially told him about the Amish renewal meetings which resulted in Hostetler’s main description of the movement in the Mennonite community magazine called Christian Living. Hostetler’s article,  “God Visits the Amish,” was quite positive about this movement at this point. A decade later when Hostetler had done more research about the Amish and published Amish Society (1963), he saw this reform movement largely through the eyes of the traditional Lancaster Amish, something to be ignored at best, to be resisted at worst.

Another friendly visitor at our house was the Amish-raised journalist Alma Kauffman who was then working for the Wooster Daily Record. Alma was the daughter of John and Susan (Schlabach) Kauffman and had grown up in our area; I simply remember Andrew and Mattie calling her a writer and light-hearted (nix nutzich). Later she would go on to work for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. When she retired from journalism, she moved back to Holmes County, attending the Millersburg Mennonite Church where she was a good friend of my mother Mattie.

Finally, much of this chapter is about Andrew because he is the one who wrote and hence left a box of writings in the Archives of the Mennonite Church. This was however a busy year for Mattie because she kept the home and farm going when Andrew was away, and was a full partner with the children on the various projects. Even more, she was busy in caring for us little ones, and on December 24, she gave our family a fifth and final brother for Christmas. James was born.   

Much of this chapter comes from memory and family conversation. A full treatment of the total Amish mission movement is in Steven M. Nolt “The Amish ‘Mission Movement’ and the Reformulation of Amish Identity in the Twentieth Century,” in the Mennonite Quarterly Review (January, 2001, pages 7-36). Nolt’s work was largely based on the Andrew A. Miller collection of letters and publications in the Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana. Andrew kept an excellent record of his writing, letters and activities during this period. The Beechville Bible classes notebook and quotation comes from this box as do references from Gertrude Enders Huntington letter. The annoying Amish literature which got John A. Hostetler going is noted in The Amish in the American Imagination by David Weaver-Zercher, Johns Hopkins University Press (2001). Hostetler’s positive description or the Amish mission movement appeared as “God Visits the Amish,” Christian Living (March, 1954, pages 6-7, 40-41).