Born Amish

Born Amish is a true story about Dr. Ann Stoltzfus Taylor’s memories of life as a little Amish girl, whose world shifted one fateful day in the spring of 1954. When the author was fourteen years old, the bishop—known to her as Uncle Dan—abruptly ex-communicated her father, grandfather, and others during a heated discussion over a friend’s growing manufacturing business.

Now, in this heart-warming memoir, Ann paints a picture of growing up in an Amish farm family, whose influences weren’t truly understood until now. The power and benefits of those cultural values—and the pain of ex-communication that sparked her interest in psychology and therapy—would spur her on to earn three degrees, including a doctorate from Temple University.

This “Amish Way” influenced how she lived as a wife and career woman in a world very different from her upbringing in the Old-Order Amish Society of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.