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The Mississippi Department of Archives and History hosted 15 second-year construction systems students from Fallin Career and Technology Center who participated in a pilot Historic Trades Field Day at Historic Jefferson College on Thursday. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Deondre Knight and Johnkeith Galmore explain how they made wooden mallets on Thursday at the Historic Trades Filed Day at Historic Jefferson College. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Fallin Career and Technology Center students go on a scavenger hunt to identify architectural elements of historic buildings on the Historic Jefferson College campus. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Fallin Career and Technology Center students go on a scavenger hunt to identify architectural elements of historic buildings on the Historic Jefferson College campus. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Fallin Career and Technology Center students go on a scavenger hunt to identify architectural elements of historic buildings on the Historic Jefferson College campus. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

Fallin Career and Technology Center students go on a scavenger hunt to identify architectural elements of historic buildings on the Historic Jefferson College campus. (Sabrina Robertson | The Natchez Democrat)

NATCHEZ — Fifteen Fallin Career and Technology Center students joined historians Thursday at a Historic Trades Filed Day at Historic Jefferson College, where they explored the campus and career pathways in historic preservation through hands-on activities.

Students spent the earlier part of the lesson in a lecture before each built their own wooden mallet, customized with their signature engraved on the stock, to use in their future projects, said Nick Conner, who leads preservation field studies at Historic Jefferson College.

As the historic campus is being revitalized into a preservation school and interpretive center, it has hosted many college-level and now high school-level students studying vital trades.

Established in 1802, Historic Jefferson College was the first institution of higher learning in the Mississippi Territory that later became a high-school-level military boarding school.

It is a significant historic site for Mississippi and has achieved national significance as the campus and its landscape are remarkably intact. HJC is approximately 80 acres with eight extant buildings with construction dates ranging from 1818–1937.

Now, the campus returns to its roots as students once again walk through its doors.

After the carpentry lesson, Natchez students went on a “scavenger hunt” where they toured the campus and looked for clues to help them fill out a worksheet about architectural elements of its buildings.

Pencil markings left by former Historic Jefferson College students, and unfortunately, some graffiti from later work done on the buildings in the 70s, could be seen on the walls and are now part of the building’s history.

Students were told before entering a building that adding to those markings was a big “no, no.”

They listened and carefully stepped around places where the flooring had been taken up as instructed. Eyes gazed up at massive beams in the ceiling and exposed brick in the walls.

“What do you notice about the handrails?” Conner asked the students on one of the building’s upper floors.

“They’re short?” the students answered. True enough, the railing came up about waist high.

“That’s because people are taller now than they were back then, and that’s a fact,” Conner said.

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