From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   The town was the home of the Tyson & Jones Buggy Co., a predominant cart and   
   buggy manufacturer in the late 1800s. A common local story is that after the   
   closing of the Tyson Buggy Co., Henry Ford was interested in buying the old   
   plant and converting it    
   into a car assembly line. According to the legend, the owners refused to let   
   Ford buy the plant. He moved on and built his first plant in Detroit, making   
   it the center of auto manufacturing. This story is often repeated despite a   
   lack of evidence, and it    
   does not fit runs contrary to the life of Ford, who was born and raised in   
   Detroit and started his businesses there. A few years after being closed, the   
   former Tyson Buggy plant burned down.   
      
   Another common local story is that the town was originally selected as the   
   site for UNC. But supposedly city leaders did not want the university built   
   there. City leaders purportedly told the State that Carthage was on too steep   
   of a hill for locomotives    
   to climb and that access to the university would be limited if built there.   
   This often-repeated story does not account for the fact that locomotives were   
   not invented until two decades after the university had been built in Chapel   
   Hill.   
      
   The town has an annual event in spring called the Buggy Festival. This event   
   is used to showcase the history of the town and feature music, hot rods, old   
   tractors, old buggies made by the Tyson Buggy Company, and crafts from   
   potteries in the surrounding    
   areas. This event is held in the town square around the Old Court House,   
   recognized as an historic landmark.   
      
   Tyson & Jones buggy factory partner, William T. Jones was born the son of a   
   slave and her white owner in 1833. By the time of his death in 1910, William   
   T. Jones was one of the prominent business owners in Carthage. He rubbed   
   elbows with the elite, white,   
    upper class in Moore County during the 1880s, dined with them, threw   
   elaborate holiday parties where most of the guests were white, and even   
   attended church with them. Both of his wives, Sophia Isabella McLean and   
   Florence Dockery were white. Dockery    
   was the daughter of a well-to-do Apex family.   
      
   James Rogers McConnell, a resident of Carthage (3/14/1887 – 3/19/1917) flew   
   as an aviator during WWI in the Lafayette Escadrille and authored Flying for   
   France. He was the first of 64 University of Virginia students to die in   
   battle during that War.    
   McConnell was flying in the area of St.-Quentin when two German planes shot   
   him down on March 19, 1917. He was the last American pilot of the squadron to   
   die under French colors before America entered the war in April 1917. Both the   
   plane and his body    
   were found by the French, and he was buried at the site of his death at the   
   edge of the village of Jussy, and was later reinterred at the Lafayette   
   Escadrille memorial near Paris upon his father's wishes. McConnell was   
   commemorated with a plaque by the    
   French Government and a statue by Gutzon Borglum at the University of   
   Virginia, as well as an obelisk on the court square of his home town of   
   Carthage NC.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage,_North_Carolina   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)