AMERICA'S Amish — a quiet, reclusive people who disdain trappings of the modern world such as electricity and who travel in horse-drawn buggies — have seen their population nearly double in the past 16 years.

Members of the Anabaptist Protestant sect moved from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and founded communities in the north-eastern states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

Today there are Amish communities in 28 US states and the Canadian province of Ontario, according to a new study released by the Anabaptist and Pietist studies department at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

While in 1992 the researchers put the Amish population at 125,000, that figure rose to 231,000 in 2008 — an 86% increase.

During that period, Amish communities were founded in the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, the Amish population grew 400% in Virginia, 200% in Kentucky, and 150% in Montana.