06/19/2026
Last month, we took a look into the Hampton Buggy Company of Leaksville (now Eden), North Carolina. Located a little less than two hours southeast sits the town of Carthage, North Carolina; where in 1856 Thomas B. Tyson purchased a buggy repair shop. He soon hired a carriage painter, William T. Jones, to assist in the shop, known at this time as the Tyson, Kelly & Company. Little did Tyson and Jones know they would soon partner and eventually own one of the leading manufacturers of buggies in the 19th century.
Jones was born in 1833 to a white plantation owning father and an enslaved mother. According to accounts, his complexion was light enough to pass as white, as he married a white woman (in*******al marriage was illegal in the state of North Carolina until 1967) and even listed himself as white in the 1860 Census. Thomas Bethune Tyson Sr. was born in 1813 in Carthage. During the American Civil War, Tyson served in the Confederate army rising to the rank of 1st Lieutenant. He was captured by the Union army and imprisoned at Fort Delaware. While imprisoned, Jones made and sold moonshine from food scraps. He saved an estimated $3,000.
Throughout the American Civil War, the buggy company remained closed. After the war, using the $3,000 he saved from selling moonshine in prison, Tyson reopened and upgraded the buggy company. In the 1870s, Jones headed north where he visited other buggy manufacturers. Upon returning to North Carolina, Jones purchased the machinery needed for mass production. By 1878, annual production was at 300 buggies. By the 1890s, these numbers grew to 100 workers, producing 3000 buggies annually! Sadly, as with many of the other buggy manufacturing companies, the rise of the automobile spelled doom in the 1920s, with the last buggy delivered in 1925.
Today, the location of the Tyson and Jones Buggy Company is marked with a North Carolina Historical Marker. You can find a Tyson and Jones buggy on display at the North Carolina Transportation Museum, located near the Hampton Buggy and other wagons manufactured in North Carolina.
Photo credits: Newspaper clipping: Find a Grave. Building: Town of Carthage
