Arson Of Amish Barns A Mystery -- Community Values Put Victims Back On Their Feet

BELLEVILLE, Pa. - Esle Hostetler was deep in his dreams, buried under blankets on a cold, blustery night last weekend in the Big Valley. This was Amish country, with only the bright moon for a night light in his home without electricity. Outside, the family buggy was parked and still. Cattle and horses slumbered in the barn.

But when the rumble of trucks awakened his family shortly before midnight a week ago Saturday, Hostetler threw open his front door to a hot orange light. The barn was in flames, its roof collapsed, the walls soon to follow. Inside, 31 of his animals were dead or dying.

Elsewhere in the valley, five other Amish barns were burning, set afire by unknown arsonists who completed an 18-mile route in less than two hours. Only one barn was insured.

The losses toted up last Sunday morning were more disastrous than the million-dollar price tag implied: 139 cattle, the main livelihood on these dairy farms; 38 horses, among them the big Belgian draft animals that pull plows and hay wagons; the plows and wagons themselves; seed for the upcoming spring planting; milking sheds and equipment; and four threshing machines that, while old and creaky, are almost irreplaceable because the Amish have religious rules against using more worldly technology.

YEAR OF HARDSHIP AHEAD

Now a year of hardship is ahead for the Big Valley Amish, a community 60 miles northwest of the state capital, Harrisburg. But the same values of passiveness, simplicity and community that made them easy victims last weekend began putting them back on their feet in the days that followed.

On Monday morning, bearded men in dark clothes and wide-brimmed hats began arriving with picks and shovels at all six farms, clip-clopping up the manure-dotted roads in buggy after buggy.

By late afternoon they had cleared the rubble and buried the animals. On Tuesday they marked and dug foundations for new barns, and scores of more bearded, hatted men began arriving in vans and buses from other Amish communities across Pennsylvania.

Soon, more than a hundred will be working at each site, neglecting the chores of their own farms to begin raising the frames of new barns.

As Hostetler stood Tuesday on the muddy ground where his barn used to be, he had nothing to say about who might have done such a thing. He offered only a shrug and a blank look, as if he had already left such thoughts behind. It is the Amish way to do so, without retaliation, and it is the same thing that makes them conscientious objectors in times of war.

Normally on a late winter's day like this, he would be hauling manure or getting in fodder for the livestock. Instead, he has tucked a green pencil into the narrow brim of his black hat and is thinking about the design of his new barn. Behind him 20 men are hacking at the ground with picks and shovels.

"Tomorrow," says Hostetler, pointing toward the men, "three times as many will be here."

The unity of the Amish in times of need is extraordinary. Clair DeLong, who won the trust of the Big Valley Amish during his 30 years as Mifflin County's agricultural extension agent, said that some of the families are lucky to clear $3,000 from a year's labors. So, dropping everything on the verge of spring planting to help a neighbor a few weeks is to risk financial ruin.

DIFFERENCES SET ASIDE

The cooperation is all the more amazing considering the many fractures that have splintered the Amish through centuries of debate over seemingly tiny differences.

Hostetler, like four of the other farmers whose barns were burned, is a white-buggy "Nebraska" Amish, a nickname that comes from a Nebraska bishop who moved to the valley in 1881. They adhere to the most rigid rules regarding displays of worldliness.

A bit more liberal are the black-buggy and yellow-buggy Amish. The 700 or so black-toppers can wear clothes with zippers and their hat brims are not quite as wide. They use more machines than the Nebraskans.

The sixth barn burned in the valley belonged to a black-topper, Samuel M. Yoder, and on Tuesday he, too, was presiding over a large team of workers from different Amish groups.

Binding the Amish together is farming, the occupation mandated by their belief that they must stay close to the land and out of the cities. So even as the number of sects has multiplied, their daily march of labor has proceeded by the same cycles of rain, sun and the seasons.

----------- HOW TO HELP -----------

To send money to the relief effort, make checks payable to the Big Valley Barn Fire Relief Fund, and mail to Kish Bank, Box 917, 310 E. Main St., Belleville, Pa., 17004.