Amish Acres
Amish Acres is a tourist attraction in Nappanee, Indiana, created from an 80-acre (320,000 m2) Old Order Amish farm. The farm was purchased in October 1968 at auction from the Manasses Kuhns’ estate. The farm was homesteaded by Moses Stahly in 1873. Moses was the son of pioneer Christian Stahly who emigrated from Germany with his widowed mother Barbara and three brothers to the southwest corner of Elkhart County in 1839; making them, perhaps, the earliest Amish settlers in Indiana.
Amish Acres opened to the public in June 1970 after more than a year of restoration. Today the complex includes the original nine buildings, two relocated log buildings, an ice house, a mint distillery, a maple sugar camp, an apple cider mill, a one-room school, and a blacksmith shop. Three bank barns and the Round Barn Theatre have also been moved to the property. The original farmstead is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Amish Acres features guided house and farm tours, a narrated wagon ride, domestic craft demonstrations, a 400-seat family style restaurant, a 200-seat Barn Loft Grill, 400-seat repertory musical theatre, the 64-room Inn at Amish Acres and 66-room Nappanee Inn.
A separate Amish settlement on the eastern side of the county began holding church services in 1841. The land granted to the Stahly brothers was nearly contiguous farms. Because of the tamarack swamp to the south of the Continental Divide and the heavily forested land to the north, it was the last part of the county settled by immigrants. The county was created in 1830 in Indiana out of the Indiana Territory following the creation of the State of Ohio. Colonel John Jackson was sent into the area to eradicate the Potawatomi Indians living in a village on the Elkhart River near present-day Baintertown. U.S. Government forces destroyed the abandoned village twice in the decade. Chief Five Medals had made two trips to Washington, D.C., to acquire federal grant money to help transition his village from hunter-gatherers into farmers, so as to live peacefully beside the arriving white settlers. The last of the Potawatomis were removed from Indiana by decree of the Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830.
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