The Geauga Amish Historical Library is proof that great things can be discovered in small packages.
Squeezed between Karl’s Jewelry and Middlefield Tavern on East High Street in Middlefield, the nascent library is long and narrow, but it has plenty of room to do what the library committee intended: to provide a central location where Amish and Yankees alike can learn more about the area’s Amish history.
“We have books back to the 1500s,” said committee member John Gingerich, motioning toward a shelf of family Bibles, genealogies, and history books about the Old Order Amish and Mennonites.
Ledgers, letters, journals and books about Amish martyrs mark the beginnings of the library that Gingerich and committee members Eli D. Miller, John A. Gingerich and Samuel J. Weaver hope will grow.
Donations of money and historical materials are still needed to fill out the library, which will be open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays following the library’s grand opening Nov. 29, he said.
The Geauga Amish community, with 111 districts in four counties and 15,000 members, is the fourth largest such settlement in the U.S., Gingerich said, adding, however, unlike many other communities in the U.S. and Canada, it has not had a centralized library.
Considering there have been Amish families in Geauga County since Samuel Weaver settled here in 1886, it is hard to believe.
“It’s about time we had one,” said Gingerich, who admitted to being the “default librarian” while the GAHL is getting on its feet.
He was invited to join the committee six years ago because they were aware he had been collecting historical Amish material.
Gingerich, who speaks Pennsylvania Dutch and has written and published a book about the Amish, has relatives among the Amish community.
His father was raised Amish, but never joined the church, Gingerich said, adding that has not kept him from having good connections with his extended Amish family.
“We’re pretty close,” he said.
He’s planning to bring some of his own artifacts to display at GAHL. For instance, he has a chair made by his great, great, great grandfather.
He is hoping other historical objects or printed materials will be donated or loaned to the library from the Geauga Amish community.
While it may seem to other area residents that the Amish community is frozen in the 1880s or earlier, things have changed, Gingerich said.
When everyone depended on horses for transportation, the Amish men wore long tan coats made from flax material with a slit up the back for riding astride, he said.
But parents still tell the same historical tales to their kids that were popular centuries ago.
Everyone knows the story about Dirck Willem, a Mennonite who escaped a prison in Holland. While fleeing, he ran across a frozen lake to escape a guard. When the guard fell through the ice, Willem rescued him, and was subsequently arrested, jailed and burned at the stake, according to the Martyrs’ Mirror, Gingerich said.
“The Martyrs’ Mirror is in most Amish homes,” he said, adding it was written in 1660 in Dutch, then translated and printed in German in America in 1748. Willem’s example is impressed upon Amish kids to this day, Gingerich said.
Besides books and displays, Gingerich plans to have a little bookstore in the back of the library where Amish families can buy books and hymnals.
At the front of the area are several large display cases donated by Middle-field Cheese where the oldest and most fragile books will be kept safe with descriptions beside them, he said.
The future is a little murky, as the library was set up on a shoestring, Gingerich said. The central location was a primary consideration to make it available to the numerous families who visit Middlefield weekly and to school groups.
“We plan to have school field trips, with programs set up for when the students come in,” he said.
While waiting for a good location to present itself, the committee toured several Amish libraries around the region to get an idea of what those communities support and use, Gingerich said.
When the space owned by Karl Hofstetter became available, they took the plunge.
In his spare time, the librarian/archivist has started a four-page newsletter called Der Mitteilungsbrief. Volume 1, Issue 1, dated Nov. 29, 2014, includes a lot of interesting information about the original Weaver family that settled here in 1886 and why the area attracted so many Amish families.
For now, Gingerich said he is spending many evenings at the GAHL organizing it with the help of Dieter Huth.
“Hopefully we’ll have everything set up,” he said.