The history of Amish and Mennonite families in this area can be learned at Menno-Hof in Shipshewana. The Northern Indiana Amish Library in rural LaGrange County, operated by Floyd Miller, is open by appointment. Founded in 2008 and overseen by a board of directors, a key component of the library is genealogy.

Daniel Kragt, who remodeled the home of Wolcottville’s founding father George Wolcott, will bring a piece of Amish history to Wolcottville. It is a two-story house believed to have been built in 1844 on CR 37 in Elkhart County, just north of SR 4, by one of the original Amish families. Records dating back to 1844 show that the first owner was a miller, says Kragt. He bought it from James Eash, who built a new house on the property, which has been in the Eash family for more than a century.

Kragt bought the house a year and a half ago through Levi Wickey, who specializes in relocating historic barns. Kragt recently landed a corner lot at 115 E. Wolcott St., just a couple houses east of Wolcott’s house.

Kragt and his wife, Anna, purchased the Wolcott House in 2017 from Indiana Landmarks, the state nonprofit organization that works to preserve and protect historic buildings. After the remodeling process was completed several years ago, the Kragts were eager for another project. They will oversee the interior restoration and then plan to sell the relocated Amish home.

The structure, floor and roof are complete.

“It was very complicated,” Wickey said. “We spent two weeks just on the floor system.”

Last week, their sixth week on the job, Wickey’s team worked on walls, siding and windows.

The original beams and hand-hewn beams were preserved, which Wickey stored between disassembling the house more than a year ago on Eash’s property and reassembling it this fall in Wolcottville.

“It’s got very good wood,” Kragt said, “very good wood.”

Wickey replaced boards from a period house and a barn when necessary, including a vertical beam in the basement, which is larger and deeper than the basement from which the house was built. A long, original beam carved from a native tree will span the width of the front porch.

Wickey said overall the building will probably be stronger when it’s finished than when it was built.

“We had a lot of challenges in this,” Wickey said. He shared a couple of interesting finds: original siding behind a porch and wood chips used for insulation. Another thing that caught Wickey’s attention was the way the roof pieces fit together (with notches, like Lincoln logs) without using nails.

The Millers and Bontragers moved to northern Indiana in 1841 after a district was divided into Adams County. They were part of a white influx that followed treaties of the 1820s ceding land to Native Americans.

People from Switzerland and Germany persecuted for their belief in the Anabaptist religion immigrated to the United States, most of them settling in Pennsylvania. Flipping through a leather-bound book, Miller noted how many families arrived on a ship called the Charming Nancy in 1738.

Many local Amish can trace their lineage to mid-18th century cultural icon Jacob Hochstetler, Miller said. During the turbulent years when both Native Americans and pioneers were claiming American soil, Hochstetler’s cabin was burned and members of his family were captured and killed. Hochstetler escaped. Weak from hunger and exhaustion, he finally found a camp and was taken in by soldiers, says “Test of Faith,” a children’s version of the story.

Of Hochstetler’s four children, 44,000 families can claim kinship, Miller said.

“Most of us come back to it again and again,” he said. He cited a woman who can trace her origins to Hochstetler in 60 different ways.

The Amish Library of Northern Indiana has a large collection of coded genealogy books. It has information about the area districts, including plat maps, directories, cemetery records and history books, as well as new and used Bibles, songbooks and books that can be purchased.

The strong, close-knit culture of the Amish is a vibrant thread woven into the history of LaGrange County. The house the Kragts are restoring in Wolcottville is another chapter in the book.