Centreville is Michigan's oldest surviving Amish settlement

The Centreville Amish settlement began in 1910. The Young Center’s 2025 table — the latest available when this page was checked — lists it with 18 church districts and an estimated 2,210 people. In the table’s Michigan section, no settlement has an earlier founding date or a larger population estimate. A separate peer-reviewed profile also identifies Centreville as an important, long-established settlement near the Indiana line.

There is a border wrinkle worth knowing. The much larger Elkhart-LaGrange settlement is listed under Indiana, even though the Young Center’s table says it reaches into St. Joseph County, Michigan. So “Michigan’s largest” here means the largest settlement listed under Michigan, not every Amish population whose settlement crosses the state line. Population figures are estimates too, and they change as families move and church districts divide.

An Amish settlement is not one village with a formal boundary. It is a geographic cluster of church districts and households. The peer-reviewed profile says Amish and non-Amish homes are interspersed across a lightly developed rural area that includes several towns. That is why this note is attached to the Nottawa Township page, which contains Centreville Village, but not to farther-out townships without a source that maps the settlement there.

On the road, the useful rule is patience. Michigan’s driver manual says to slow to about 15 to 20 mph behind a horse-drawn buggy, leave at least 20 feet, pass only when the road is clear, and avoid honking or revving the engine. The settlement is a living community, not a themed attraction, and those shared roads are part of everyday life in this corner of St. Joseph County.