On a cloudy October morning, 135 sixth, seventh and eighth graders climbed off three white buses. The children, students at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Kenner, La., are already late to the first part of their field trip, a visit to a museum light years behind the busy city street just over the tree line.
Perhaps one of LSU’s least known treasures is the Rural Life Museum. Located on the Burden Research Plantation, the 450-acre agricultural research experiment station is owned by the LSU Agricultural Center. The museum has quietly developed a small following since its donation to the University in 1970.
A small staff and caretakers run the museum, and volunteers give their time to lead groups around the small replica plantation situated off Essen Lane.
Jack Field, a retired financial planner, has been volunteering at the Rural Life Museum since 1999.
This Monday morning he is waiting outside the Rural Life Museum for a tour group already 30 minutes late.
Field woke up extra early this morning to study the three-page outline of the Blacksmith’s Shop, the exhibit he will be manning for this field trip.
Field says part of his job is interacting with the children as much as teaching them.
The six other docents, or volunteer tour guides, get into position, one for each exhibit in the circle-replica of an 1800’s plantation.
As the children walk up, Field gets into position and takes a group of 20 seventh graders out to the blacksmith shop, where they will start the hour tour.
“The blacksmith’s shop is where everything was made on the plantation,” Field tells the group. “Everything from hair pins for the women to horse materials and cooking supplies.”
A bell sounds, telling the students to continue on to the next exhibit, just down the beaten path.
The children, although seemingly interested in the prospect of iron and fire, muse their way out of the blacksmith’s shop and Field, not quite finished with his Blacksmith’s lecture, prepares for the next 20.
A one-room schoolhouse stands against the cold, gray sky, its two doors open and waiting. Without children for countless years, it welcomes this new X-Box generation, giving them a peek at what life used to be like.
“I bet y’all thought you’d get out of class today,” says the docent for the schoolhouse. “If you cut up in this classroom and your parents found out – you were in deep trouble.”
Education was a privilege back then, usually ending at age 16 or 17 for the boys and 12 or 13 for the girls, who were generally married off by that point.
The children laugh and shake their heads at that notion and at the sight of the small, wooden desks and significantly smaller lunch pails.
“The average lunch for a schoolchild would be a sweet potato and a piece of cornbread,” the docent says.
As the children, becoming more and more interested by the minute, file out of the schoolhouse, one of the present-day teachers asks a young girl: “So how’d you like to go to a school like that?”
At the head of the circle is the largest building, the overseer’s house. The children make their way up to the porch, where Ron and Linda Juneau are waiting.
The overseer was the person in charge of production on an 1800s plantation, but was often ready to move onto his next job at the first sign of trouble.
His house is built off the ground to prevent flooding and keep it cooler during the summer. None of the adjacent slave quarters have any of these amenities.
In the group is a wide-eyed eighth grader named Beau Richard, who hangs around the back surveying his surroundings.
“It’s weird how they spend less time in school,” Richard says. “They didn’t have the stuff that we do.”
Richard and his friends candidly ask about television or any kind of luxury item, which is noticeably missing from the overseer’s house.
“They didn’t even have air conditioning or anything like that,” Richard says in amazement.
Separate from the house is the kitchen, which was built away from the house to keep the threat of fire at bay.
“The kitchen would catch on fire frequently,” says Mrs. Legrande, the docent.
This small room, no bigger than 100 square feet, was responsible for cooking for the entire plantation. The cooks would make stews and soups for the slaves at lunchtime and wild game, fish and seafood for the owners.
The children don’t seem too excited when Mrs. Legrande tells them people still cook out of the rough-looking pots and pans.
“That’s gross,” one of the children says.
Down the beaten path is the sick house, and the students are beginning to get restless.
“This is boring,” one of them says. “When’s lunch?”
The chances of survival were very low in the 1800’s, and the sick house was not a place a plantation resident would want to wind up. Young children around the age of these junior high students were often the victims of diseases such as cholera.
Close to the sick house is the sugarhouse, where sugar was made from sugar cane.
“It was backbreaking work,” the sugarhouse docent says.
Adjacent to an iron-fenced graveyard is a small, one-roomed church and the last stop on the tour.
The Catholic influence is prevalent in the church, with a kneeler at the back of the room and stained glass windows keeping the light out.
“They couldn’t afford stained glass in small churches like this one,” says the church’s docent. “So they painted the glass different colors.”
The church room, filled with pews, could be divided into two by a curtain for Sunday school or other church activities.
Lying at the front of the altar is a coffin.
“Is there anybody in there?” one of the seventh graders asks. “Can we look?”
The docent says no, but the children still take a swipe at the coffin on their way out.
The children file out of the church and head back towards the buses, but not before stopping to look at the cemetery.
Part of a multi-site field trip, the Rural life Museum was just an hour out of the sixth, seventh and eighth graders from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s
history-exploring day, but the children left humbled.
“It showed me a lot about the life of slaves and how the plantation was run,” said seventh-grader Allison Uli. “I’m glad we don’t have to live this way.”