Fifth graders boarded buses and took a trip to Liendo Plantation, a historic cotton plantation built in 1853 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The Nov.16 trip was another in a series of educational ventures that took students out of the classrooms.
Liendo, in Waller County just outside of Hempstead, was considered a typical Southern plantation, having more than 300 slaves and itself was a product of slave labor.
The students toured the grounds, ate lunch and then watched a Civil War reenactment. During the Civil War, Liendo hosted cavalry and infantry training camps, an internment camp and a hospital, according to Historic Houston: How to See It: One Hundred Years and One Hundred Miles a Day Trips. For a brief time after the war, the plantation served as headquarters for Gen. George Armstrong Custer.
Students met and talked to volunteers who wore clothing from the period and reenacted the period lifestyle. Overall, it was an educational and exciting day for Varnett's fifth-grade students.