Arcola: Three Families and the Illinois Amish

Arcola was founded in eighteen fifty-five when the Illinois Central Railroad platted the town, borrowing the name from a village in northern Italy. Nine years later, in eighteen sixty-four, three Amish families made the journey from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, to the rich farmland of Douglas County along the Kaskaskia River. Those three families, Moses Yoder, Daniel Miller, and Daniel Otto, became the seed of what is now the largest Amish settlement in Illinois.

Today the Douglas County community centered on Arcola and the neighboring town of Arthur counts nearly forty-five hundred Amish people organized into about thirty church districts. The Illinois Amish Heritage Center in Arcola preserves two of the oldest Amish homes in the state, dating to those original three families.