Amish in Texas: 2024 Guide (15 Photos)

The popular image of Texas is a land of oil, beef cattle, and ten-gallon hats. Not exactly what comes to mind when you think “Amish”. And truth be told, few Amish have ever settled in the Lone Star state.

The only Amish community in Texas

But in a remote corner of the state, Stetson hats give way to broad-rimmed plain ones. Bee County in south Texas has been home to a small Amish settlement since 1999. Today (2024) the total Texas Amish population stands at just 75 people.

1. The Bee County (Beeville) Amish
2. Beeville Amish Stores
3. Bee County Amish Auctions
4. Previous Texas Amish Communities
5. Stephenville Amish (defunct community)
6. Amish in Texas Today

The Amish of Bee County, Texas

Bee County is located deep in southern Texas, about 90 miles southeast of San Antonio. The Bee County Amish settlement, located near the county seat of Beeville, was started by Amish from Tennessee in 1999. The Beeville settlement is one of the most southerly Amish communities in the country, second only to the community at Pinecraft in Sarasota, Florida.

The Bee County community is a single church district in size. The first settlers to this community numbered around two dozen souls. The settlement’s Bishop, Truman Borntrager, cited in a newspaper article at the time, explained that “We came here for the climate…It’s humid in Tennessee.”

Borntrager also noted the crowded conditions of their Tennessee community as another motivation to move south (“Amish Family Breaks Ground in Bee County”, Darren Barbee, Corpus Christi Caller Times, August 11, 1999).

Over the years the community has not attracted many settlers – at least not enough to form a second church district. Most of the families living in this community are reportedly related. The remote nature of the community contributes to its lack of growth. The nearest Amish settlement, at Clarita, Oklahoma, is over 450 miles away.

Bee County Amish Country: This isn’t Lancaster County

One striking aspect of this community is the rough terrain and appearance of the area. Visitors expecting to see lush rural landscapes and the classic Amish dairy farm views…will be disappointed. This is south Texas, after all.

The rough appearance extends to the local Amish homes as well. The group is among the Plainer (more traditional) ones. The more conservative Amish tend to live in homes which have a rougher and plainer appearance. That said, this is an extreme.

This reflects both their values (putting less emphasis on aesthetics – landscaping and fancy flower gardens are not for these Amish) and often also their financial situation.

More conservative Amish generally have fewer opportunities for work which would fit within their church Ordnung (in a nutshell, church rules governing technology and other aspects of life). That plus the fact that this more remote area is not as economically prosperous as other regions of the state means Amish properties tend to look something like this:

Bee County Texas Amish Businesses

Amish in the Bee County community have a variety of occupations. Some make buggies, others do horseshoeing (more on Amish furniture in Texas). There is a general store and sales of baked goods. Some produce is grown using irrigation. In the community there is also some horse training, and fittingly, beekeeping.

The best-known Amish business in Bee County – and the entire state, for that matter – would be Borntrager’s Combination Shop. It’s owned and run by the community’s Bishop, Truman Borntrager.

Just what is a “Combination Shop”? It seems that it’s the local take on the “variety store” concept. They have a bit of just about everything. Among the services he provides, Borntrager makes custom carriages for non-Amish customers.

As in most cases, Amish businesses here are open to the public, and you should feel free to visit them. Borntrager Combination Shop address: 4029 Bee 190, Beeville, TX 78102.

Bee County Amish Auctions

In addition to its local business activity, the Beeville Amish community plays host to another important business event each year. The community hosts annual school auctions in the Spring and Autumn.

A previous attendee has this to say about the auction:

This year there was rain during part of the auction but it didn’t slow it down at all. The barn was packed with buyers and two auctions were running simultaneously.

There are buggies and horses and miniature ponies and cattle and puppies, a huge section of antiques and tools and kitchen ware are up for auction. Of course food and drinks are sold on the side of the auction and no one goes hungry!

It’s a fun event and as big as Texas is, everybody is warm and welcoming, and you feel like you are all old friends.

In addition to the twice-yearly school auctions, the community fairly recently started holding monthly consignment auctions, selling furniture, machinery, antiques, farm animals, and more. The location is:

Borntrager Farms
4226 Gaitan Lane
Beeville, TX 78102
361-362-3283

As for specific dates and times, the information on these events is frequently updated, and you should be able to find the latest schedule with an online search. And as one auction site notes, “no electricity at this sale, kerosene lanterns come out when the sun goes down. Cash and check only.”

Finally, as a side note, the Bee County Amish settlement once attracted national attention (at least in the birding community), with the Amish playing a part. When a rare northern wheatear took up residence on Amishman John Borntrager’s farm,  Birders flocked from around the country to Texas to catch a glimpse of the unusual arctic specimen, named “Wanderer” by Borntrager (“Arctic bird makes rare appearance”, David Sikes, Corpus Christi Caller Times, January 5, 2010).

Former Texas Amish settlements

Texas has seen a number of Amish attempts to settle throughout its history. Most of these date to over a century ago.  Amish showed interest in establishing themselves in the state already in the late 1800s, with a few groups investigating the possibility of doing so. But the first bona fide settlement did not come about until 1909, near the town of Plainview in Hale County.

Plainview (Hale County) Amish (1909-1914)

Amish historian David Luthy informs us that this area was already home to an Old Mennonite congregation. Five Amish families, from Daviess County, Indiana and Ford County, Kansas, settled the region. However, drought and the lack of ministry led to this settlement’s disbandment just five years after its founding (The Amish in America: Settlements That Failed 1840-1960, pp 456-8).

Dimmit County (1910 – 1914)

The early 1900s must have been Texas’ time, because three separate attempts were made to settle the state, happening more or less simultaneously. In addition to the Hale County community, the year 1910 saw the founding of Amish settlements in both Dimmit County and Hidalgo County deep in the southern tip of the state. Both of these settlements extinguished at about the same time as the Hale County settlement did, but for different reasons.

The group which settled in Dimmit County relied on irrigation to water the otherwise arid lands where cactus and mesquite plants grew naturally. The Amish here settled along a half-mile section of road in a “village” arrangement. The reason given is that being primarily produce farmers, they farmed smaller plots of land and did not need to spread out.

A new railroad was to be the lifeline to markets for their produce, but as it happened, the price of shipping from their remote location to markets in the Midwest was greater than the money their crops would bring. It quickly became evident that produce was going to be a losing proposition. Amish began moving away and though at least one farmer attempted to raise grain the following year, with some success, all were gone by 1914. Lack of a market for their crops led to this small community’s demise (Settlements That Failed, pp. 458-462).

Hidalgo County (1910 – 1914)

The Hidalgo County settlement, on the Mexican border, existed from 1910-1914. The first settler was an Ohio native who had begun developing turberculosis and was in search of a warmer climate. Only a handful of families settled here, and no member of the ministry put down roots in the community, one reason for its extinction. Additionally, during this same time period a revolution was occurring in next-door Mexico, with the Amish within earshot of the shooting. This also contributed to the settlement’s failure (Settlements That Failed, pp. 462-3).

Cameron County (1924-1926)

A fourth Texas Amish settlement existed for a short time in the 1920s in Cameron County, the southernmost county in the state. Luthy described this short-lived attempt to settle extreme south Texas as “adventure”. Only seven families ever moved to the very bottom of Texas; lack of a resident preacher was one factor that brought this group to an end. Read more about the Cameron County group’s attempts here.

Stephenville Amish Community (1980s)

As for more recent times: it’s sometimes claimed that the area of Stephenville in north-central Texas (about 70 miles southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth area) has an Amish community. However, today this is not the case. But the area does have an interesting history of an unusual Amish presence.

By the late 1980s Amish had begun living in the area of Stephenville in Erath County. What brought them there? The unusual Stephenville community consisted primarily of “migrant” Amish that worked on local dairy farms.

An article from the time notes a community roughly 20 families in size, where many of the Amish have phones and “live in small houses or mobile homes with electricity”, typically provided by their English employers(“Stephenville Journal; Faraway Amish Try to Keep Faith”, Peter Applebome, New York Times, August 25, 1987).

One source familiar with the area had this to say, explaining the reason that Stephenville never really established itself as a permanent Old Order Amish settlement:

The Amish I knew in the mid-80s were only one family, but they had at least one relative in the Stephenville settlement. This family was basically a “guinea pig” to see how well they could do; if they succeeded, more would join them from their home community in Indiana. But they did not succeed. The climate was not conducive to farming, and without local support, living so far from things, it was just too hard. They ended up leaving after just a couple years.

The “temporary” nature of this community – with Amish living in homes with electricity – is quite unusual among the Amish (though not unheard of). In any case, the conditions which brought Amish to Stephenville and sustained them while there were not conducive to forming a long-term, permanent community.

Texas, an unlikely destination for Amish

The Bee County settlement has been around for over a quarter-century, and remains the lone Old Order Amish footprint in America’s second-largest state. However, there are some related Anabaptist religious groups living in Texas.

A Beachy Amish community is found in Lott, in central Texas (Beachy Amish have similar beliefs and background to horse-and-buggy Amish but use more technology, including driving cars). There are also a number of Mennonite churches in Texas, including a plain Mennonite community at Seminole in Gaines County (west Texas).

While Amish frequently migrate to new places, founding communities in Western states in recent years, it remains to be seen if much future Amish settlement will occur in Texas. Few Amish seem to have been drawn to the Lone Star State in the 25-plus years since the Beeville County community’s founding. Yet the Bee County community remains, never growing much, but keeping Texas on the Amish map.

Video footage from the Beeville Amish Community

For more, see:

• “Amish Population by State (2023)” Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College
• “Amish Family Breaks Ground in Bee County”, Darren Barbee, Corpus Christi Caller Times, August 11, 1999
• The Amish in America: Settlements That Failed 1840-1960, David Luthy
• Amish Settlements Across America: 2008, David Luthy
• Amish America, “Southern Amish“
• “Arctic bird makes rare appearance”, David Sikes, Corpus Christi Caller Times, January 5, 2010
• “Stephenville Journal; Faraway Amish Try to Keep Faith”, Peter Applebome, New York Times, August 25, 1987
• The New American Almanac, Raber’s Bookstore (Baltic, Ohio), Ben J. Raber

Photo credit: mesquite tree-agrilifetoday

Get the Amish in your inbox

Join 15,000 email subscribers. No spam. 100% free

Subscribe