Rather than in the individual county

The federal government took a census of religious bodies four times between 1906 and 1936. For LaGrange County it printed 4,719, then 5,142, then 4,935, then 5,415.

Each of those is the county's total in a table of selected denominations, and in each year the figures printed across the county's line add up to it exactly.

In 1906 the largest figure in the line does not belong to a denomination. It is 1,640, in the column headed Other Protestant bodies. Only the county's totals are larger. The largest body the table names is the Methodist Episcopal Church, with 1,503. The columns for the Roman Catholic Church and for Jewish congregations are blank, and all 4,719 are counted under the Protestant total.

In 1916 the same thing happens. The largest figure is 1,622, in the column headed All other bodies. Only the county's total is larger. The Methodist Episcopal Church has 1,478.

In 1926 a column headed Mennonite bodies appears in the Indiana table for the first time, and LaGrange County's figure in it is 1,057. In the same census the column for all other bodies holds 140.

In 1936 the Mennonite figure is 2,020. Only the county's total is larger. The Methodist Episcopal Church has 1,683.

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The census says how those columns were chosen. It says so in the text chapters, before the tables. The 1926 volume puts it this way, and the 1936 volume prints it again on printed page 72, with table 32 in lower case.

Membership figures for each State, by counties, are presented in Table 32 and include not only the total reported church membership for each county, but also figures for leading denominations, selected, however, on the basis of their importance in the whole State, rather than in the individual county.

The 1906 and 1916 volumes said it more gently. In 1906:

The list varies with the states, the design being to present in each case those bodies which according to the reports sent in by the individual organizations are most strongly represented in the particular state.

And in 1916:

The denominations are selected and vary with the state, the purpose of the table being to present those denominations which were most strongly represented in the particular state in 1916.

So the columns across LaGrange County's line were chosen for Indiana. A church that was large here and small in the state had no column of its own. The pages that carry the county's line say only that the denominations are selected. The reason is in the text, and it is printed plainly. The county table was never meant to show what a county looked like. Whether that is why the county's Mennonites had no column before 1926, these pages do not say.

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The census did name the Amish, elsewhere in the same volumes. Its full list of denominations names the Amish every time.

The 1906 volume lists, among the Mennonite bodies, an Amish Mennonite Church. and an Old Amish Mennonite Church. By 1916 the names are Conservative Amish Mennonite Church. and Old Order Amish Mennonite Church., and they stay so in 1926 and 1936. The census's own pamphlet on the Mennonite bodies explains the change.

The Amish Mennonite Church of 1906 has been consolidated with the Mennonite Church, but in its place has appeared the Conservative Amish Mennonite Church, while the Old Amish Mennonite Church has become the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church.

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The 1926 and 1936 figures for this county cannot be taken apart. Mennonite bodies is a family of seventeen, two of them named Amish, and no federal publication gives this county's figure by branch. The 1936 volume's index shows where county figures exist. It lists county figures for the Methodist Episcopal Church, and for Mennonite bodies as a family, which is the Table 32 figure given here. For the Mennonite Church and for the Old Order Amish Mennonite Church it lists figures by cities and by states, and nothing by counties.

So this piece cannot say how many Amish lived in LaGrange County in 1936. The census counted them, and printed a number they cannot be separated from.

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The county's own history, in 1882, recorded seven things about the Amish that it recorded for no other church in Newbury Township, and quoted none of them. The census counted them four times, named them in its lists of denominations, and never once printed the word Amish in this county's line.