The Beckendorff family
Four generations, one piece of ground.
Robert Beckendorff started farming here in the late 1880s. Blake and Stacey Beckendorff run it now, the fourth generation to work this land in Katy, Texas. The barn is the newest thing on the property. The family is not.
The dates that put the family in Katy
- Robert Beckendorff broke this ground
1880s
Robert Beckendorff broke this ground
- Generation now running the farm and the barn
4th
Generation now running the farm and the barn
- Katy's earliest recorded settlement
1872
Katy's earliest recorded settlement
- Milton Beckendorff helped form Katy ISD
1900s
Milton Beckendorff helped form Katy ISD
Where it started
Cotton first, then corn, peanuts and rice.
Robert Beckendorff broke this ground in the late 1880s growing cotton. Corn, peanuts and rice followed. Wild cattle still roamed the area freely back then. Every generation since has kept farming it, right through to the heirloom tomatoes Blake grows today.
The barn before it came to Katy.
Milton Beckendorff
He put school ahead of farm chores.
In the early 1900s, Milton Beckendorff was instrumental in forming the Katy Independent School District. At the family home, schoolwork came before farm chores, a rule that stuck for the generations after him.
Katy ISD later named a school for the family, Beckendorff Junior High School, in recognition of what the Beckendorffs gave to education and to Katy.
The barn on this land came from somewhere else entirely, an early American timber frame raised first in Ohio in the 1850s and rebuilt here generations later. Read how the barn got here.
Katy before it was Katy
Prairie, then rail, then rice.
Long before any of this was farmland, this stretch of Texas was wide open prairie, hunting ground for the Karankawa and a winter feeding ground for buffalo, ducks, geese, sandhill and whooping cranes. Longhorn, deer and wolves ran the same ground.
The first settlers arrived in 1872. Katy grew into a rail hub, then a rice farming and agricultural center, and later sat over one of the largest gas fields in this part of Texas. The Beckendorffs farmed straight through all of it.
Still a family farm
Blake, Stacey and their children are the fourth generation here.
The barn gets the attention, but the ground under it has been Beckendorff land since the 1880s. Come see both when you tour.