The Buggy
Mr. Blake Gilbert lived at his old home
place where J and R Clothing is located today across from
where New Hope Road runs into Highway 85. He was born in
1863 during the "Civil War". He was the owner of a lot of
land in and around Fayetteville and could have lived a very
comfortable and financially secure life had he been willing
to part with some of it. He remembered the days of the
“great depression” when land held more value than money and
he felt secure having the land. Huie Bray, one of his
neighbors who tried to help him in his old age, was one of
the few people he ever trusted and he sold some of this
land to him. On it Huie developed Blakely Woods.
John Lynch, one of Fayette County’s true historians, told
me the following story about Mr. Gilbert:
When Mr. Gilbert was a fairly young man in the late 1800’s,
he decided to try his hand at courting the ladies. He
bought a buggy, which was the only transportation
appropriate for courting at the time.
According to Joyce (Banks) Nipper he only went courting one
time. After his first date he came home and took his buggy
apart and stored it in his barn loft. No one knows what
went wrong but he never went courting again.
About 50 or 60 years later when Highway 85 was widened it
was necessary to take his barn out of the way. Joyce’s
father Mr. Raymond Banks knowing about the buggy stored in
the barn asked Mr. Gilbert what he was going to do with it.
Mr. Gilbert told him he could have it if he would get it
out of the loft. Mr. Gilbert told him how to put it back
together and let him take it home.
Mr. Banks stored it in a barn on his property for several
years. During Fayette County’s sesquicentennial in 1971 he
showed it off at the Fife House Museum.
Some years after Mr. Raymond and Mrs. Effie Banks died a
tree fell on the barn and demolished it, but the buggy was
unharmed. John approached Bobby and Joyce Nipper about
donating it to the Historical Society and they agreed. It
is now stored at a garage behind the old city hall awaiting
a suitable outbuilding to house it at the museum.
John added that someday this will be a good story to tell
the kids when they visit the museum.
Lowell Crawford,
a famous local artist, sent me this email after reading
this story:
Thanks for the story about "The Buggy" and I look forward
to seeing it
someday. I had no idea that barn was where it was stored on
Banks Road.
In April 2003 I took photographs of the farmhouse and the
big tree for a
watercolor painting. Three weeks later the tree split and
fell on the
barn, and the other part a week or two later. Now that big
monarch oak
is gone....and the barn.
Attached is an image of that painting. Currently it is on
display at the
BB&T on Jeff Davis in Fayetteville.
