who is this sister in baltimore?

She could well be going to Baltimore to take a bus to western or southern Maryland - both areas which have both Mennonite and Amish populations. (Although the Amish especially are only small population groups of no more than a few hundred to a thousand or so in these areas - they have been there for a number of years now. Mennonites have a history in those areas dating back to the 19th century if not earlier.) Hope this helps! (I am a former Marylander now living in Witness country.)

An Amish person can leave the community voluntarily, and it's not the same thing as "shunning." If the sister got married and moved to Baltimore or eastern Maryland, it doesn't mean she's kicked out of the family or the local Lancaster community. But shunning is like capital punishment to the Amish. If you do something so horrendous and totally against their ways, they can't make you leave, they just stop talking to you and ignore you. Even family members must ignore the shunned person. The shunned person usually leaves the community of their own accord because there's no reason to stick around. Presumably Rachel kept in touch with her sister by snail mail.

I had always figured that Rachel's sister lived in an Amish community outside of Baltimore and she simply indicated Baltimore was her final destination to simplify matters. She would probably go by bus to a smaller community outside of the city. Also, she may not have wanted to give Book that degree of detail, since she was very suspicious of the police from the outset. The Amish don't drive cars and you wouldn't take horses from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to near Baltimore. To the best of my knowledge the Amish have no exclusion on using transit (trains, busses etc.), or occasionally being driven in cars. They simply don't own cars and don't drive themselves.

There's no evidence that her sister was shunned. It's very unlikely that people (her father-in-law Eli and Daniel Hochleitner) in the community would see her off the station if her sister had been in this situation. Sometimes, Amish would have to look outside of their own community to another Amish community for marriage, to avoid inbreeding among other things. It's not impossible that her sister would simply have married a man in a different Amish community.

I love this film. Saw it in 1985 and watch the DVD at pretty regular intervals!

The sister lives elsewhere, they were traveling by train THRU Baltimore to reach her home. If you remember, Rachel and her son are waiting at the station (presumably for another train) for quite some time when the crime occurs.

[deleted]

loathes boog powell!




The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.-James Madison