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2007-05-15 issue:

Ervin Gingerich created literary legacy

by Levi Miller

Print Article

SCOTTDALE, Pa.—When Ervin N. Gingerich of Millersburg, Ohio, died April 9 at age 91, he left a literary legacy of more than 50 years in compiling 17 editions of the Ohio Amish Directory and a family of similar directories that appeared in Amish settlements across North America.

Gingerich’s first Ohio Amish Directory was a small, self-published mimeographed edition that came out in 1953, and his last one appeared in 2005, a 932-page cloth-bound edition published by Carlisle Press in Walnut Creek, Ohio.

Steve M. Nolt, a Goshen (Ind.) College historian and author of A History of the Amish noted that two dozen similar directories have been printed in settlements from Wisconsin, Minnesota and Montana to Lancaster, Pa. “His directory of 1954 was the model for subsequent ones,” said Nolt after hearing of Gingerich’s death.

The basic model Gingerich developed was to list all the church districts (a district is roughly parallel to a parish or a congregation) by name and then list all the households within that district, including address, vocation, birthdates, marriage partners and date of marriage, and names of children, including birthdates and marriage partners.

The directories were used mainly by the Amish families themselves but were also used by researchers in religion, sociology and medical studies. Two of Gingerich’s directories (1965 and 1973) were published in partnership with Johns Hopkins University.