Call it a portrait in artifacts, a picture in antiques of Car-thage’s first 200 years.

The Carthage Historical Museum opens Sunday afternoon. The bright-red front door, wavy glass window, twist bell and all, will swing open to admit the first visitors at 2 p.m.

Inside, past the wide front porch with its red-wheeled Tyson buggy, a series of Victorian-era rooms will display a myriad of relics from life here in the 18th to the 21st centuries.

Helen Mohan is one of a number of Carthaginians who’ve spent the past two years restoring the ground floors of an old home to the style of earlier days.

“We moved everything from the old museum room in the MacDonald Building up here two years ago,” Mohan told The Pilot. “But since then, we have a great many more things given to us to display. I don’t want people to say, ‘Well, we’ve seen it.’ Because they haven’t.”

Visitors will see a lot more than just what was once on display in a few cases at the old site. Now, Mohan said, the town has a proper home for her antiquities, one that will finally have its grand opening this weekend.

Ornate wooden grillwork will welcome visitors to the entry hall, where an old desk sits bearing its candlestick telephone (from the Carthage Telephone Company) and ancient typewriter.

Echoes of Old Times

On every wall are to be seen portraits of figures from the Moore County seat’s past. Glass cases display memorabilia and offer quaint echoes of times gone by.

The rooms are arranged roughly by families, businesses, and schools. One small room is devoted to the Seawell family of Edgehill, well remembered not only for old Judge Seawell, but also for “Chub” Seawell: pundit, prophet, preacher, and country lawyer.

It was said of him that if he couldn’t win his client’s case on the law, he would plead the Bible.

He is said to have told Jim Van Camp, then a young associate fresh out of Wake Forest Law School, “Young man, you teach me the law, and I’ll teach you how to charge.”

Sen. Jesse Helms penned an introduction to one of Seawell’s books, “Sketches and Satire.” Seawell often appeared as a guest on Helms’ television programs in the days prior to Helms’ election to the U.S. Senate.

In one room, along the top of a wall, can be seen a painting done by elementary school students for the bicentennial of the town, depicting a timeline of the village history.

In another place, books and articles from John McConnell are to be found. McConnell served with the Lafayette Escadrille during World War I, in the days before the United States entered the conflict. The local airfield is named for him, and an obelisk in his honor stands by the old courthouse.

Pictures of old Carthage stores and old items once sold in them are on display. There is a tapestry hanging behind an old piano that was woven on looms at Carthage Fabric, who gave the museum specially woven cloth for the fancy draperies.

In one of the rooms of the old house, the committee members discovered old cast-iron fireplace covers, and these have been restored to their proper positions on the four old fireplaces that once heated the downstairs.

Room for Expansion

Many of the exhibits recall the days of the buggy factory that was once the town’s chief industry. Before the Civil War, it was the Tyson-Kelly Buggy Factory, but after the war Jones bought out Kelly and it became the Tyson-Jones firm.

It was said Jones came by the fortune that enabled his purchase of the Kelly interest by making moonshine liquor while a Confederate prisoner of war. Jones apparently figured out a way to turn scraps of bread and other prison food into whiskey. He sold the drink to his Union guards for hard cash and returned to Carthage after the war with ready money.

When Jones died, the firm became the Tyson Buggy Factory, just in time for the invention of the automobile. A large display of the varied styles of buggies made here is on a wall of the museum. The town owns several restored buggies, and has been the site of an annual Buggy Festival for the past dozen years.