[Held_to_Ransom]

English? Yankees? Never heard in Lancaster county. We have a lot of folks besides just the Amish htough. Some Quakers that kept the faith, as well as Menonites etc. The number of runaway slaves is another great myth. Between 1850 and 1860, the number of Americans of African heritage in the northern states didn't even increase. Two factors in this though, and one was that under the Fugitive Slave Act, any freeman in tha Northern state could be legally re-enslaved. At first this caused near riots in the north, and the state courts in most state chose to ignore the Federal law. This then reduced those who could be re-enslaved to only those who could be abducted. Even if you were legal, why advertise yourself as a target in the census?

The second reason was that all during the 1850's, partolism in the south intensifiec significantly. It became exceedingly difficult for a runaway to run away. Non slave owning citizens were all required to danate one or two nights a week to riding slave partrols on the roads all night. It was this patrol system that made the south so easy to control under martial law to enable the start of the war, and also made it a natural for the formation of the post war KKK.

Naturally, any black seen on the road in the daylight was bound to be intercepted, and if not with papers or know locally, he was soon on the block.

[Dan Evans]

English? Yankees? Never heard in Lancaster county.

Interesting. The terms are used in the movie "Witness" and you come across all kinds of references on the net. Maybe they don't use those words around us.

Regarding the use of computers, I notice they do the same thing with phones. A fellow wanted one in his business and the bishop told him he had to keep it in a shed outside where he couldn't hear it ring. I read that in wasn't unusual for Amish homes to have phones sometime after the turn of the last century but they were banned as being too disruptive. And so they did the same thing -- they keep them in shed down the road. Maybe someday the Amish will be playing video games -- in a shed down the road.