Mixed Race Studies

W.T. Jones — Carthage’s best-kept secret: From slave to industrialist in the South

The Courier-Tribune
Ashboro, North Carolina
2016-03-15

Judi Brinegar

(Contributed photo)

He was born the son of a slave and her white owner in 1833. By time 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.

Yet, until a decade ago, few in this small Moore County town acknowledged out loud that Jones was not a white man.

Then, Pat Motz-Frazier entered the scene in 2005. She purchased Jones home, built in 1880 for his wife, Florence, and today runs it as a bed and breakfast, aptly named “The Old Buggy Inn.”

“He built this huge elaborate house because he and his wife wanted to fill it with children,” Motz-Frazier says. “Unfortunately, they never had any.”

Motz-Frazier ran into many brick walls while trying to research the history of her historic Victorian home. Many of those she asked, declined to acknowledge that Jones, president of the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company, was anything but a white man, she says. Slowly and methodically, she finally put together the pieces of the puzzle of what was a remarkable story of Jones, one man who, in the 19th century, never let the color of his skin define him…

Read the entire article here.

‘Town Secret’: Race of Famous Carthaginian Embraced

The Pilot
Southern Pines, North Carolina
2012-02-11

John Chappell

Every year with its Buggy Festival, Carthage celebrates the achievements of a former slave, though until recently few knew it.

William T. Jones — born a slave, and the son of a slave and her owner — ran the famed Tyson & Jones Buggy Co., the biggest business around.

Though he was an African-American described in census records as “a mulatto gentleman” and a former slave, Jones nevertheless became a leading businessman and industrialist, recognized and honored, his color the best kept secret in Carthage history.

His elaborate 1880s Queen Anne Victorian mansion stands at the entrance to the town’s historic district. Now a bed-and-breakfast inn lovingly restored with wraparound porch and fanciful gingerbread trimmed in elegant Painted Lady fashion, the Jones house evokes the lavishness of a bygone era.

Few in Carthage today realize its builder and former owner was a black man of mixed race who lived openly with his white wife, operated one of the biggest factories in the South, taught Sunday School in the Methodist Church, served on national and local boards, and was admired and loved without any mention of race.

Today, the fact that Jones was an African-American is something the town history committee’s present Chairwoman Carol Steed thinks the town can take pride in — though for years nobody spoke of it…

Read the entire article here.