Liendo

Liendo's land has an odd shape because Thomas McKinney, acting for José Justo Liendo, located five leagues in 1830 using only entirely vacant ground. Leonard Groce bought about 3,000 acres in 1841 for $1,500 and the other five leagues in 1860. About 300 enslaved people worked the cotton, by the Handbook of Texas, and the 1853 house was built of bricks made from Brazos clay by slave labor. A good year brought $80,000 to $100,000. Another account says Groce enslaved over 100 people.

What the plaque says

Liendo A plantation home built in 1853 by Leonard W. Groce. The scene for many years of lavish Southern hospitality. Purchased March 4, 1873, by Dr. Edmund Duncan Montgomery 1835-1911), world-famed philosopher, and his wife, Elisabet Ney (1833-1907), pioneer sculptress of Texas. Retained as their homestead throughout their lives. Both are buried in the grounds.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Star of the Republic Museum — 17 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.
• Navasota — 20 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 21 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.

More markers nearby

• Gen. George and Libbie Custer Campsite — 0.7 mi
• Groce Family Plantations — 1.1 mi
• Prairie View A&M University — 2.5 mi
• Jacob E. Freeman — 2.5 mi