Come see a carriage similar to the one Lafayette rode in when he visited Murfreesboro in 1825; inspect an early peanut picker designed and built by the Ferguson Agriculture Implement Company; and see a replica of America’s first airplane designed, built and flown by James Henry Gatling.

All of this and more can be seen at Murfreesboro’s Agriculture and Transportation Museum.

The museum is currently undergoing an extensive renovation, which will establish it as Northeast North Carolina’s premiere museum of its kind. You will enjoy not only viewing the many plows, seed planters, and other farm implements, but also the early carriages, buggies and other vehicles. Visit the museum often and watch the progress of the museum’s exhibits mature into innovative interactive exhibitions.

This is the first known man-powered airplane built and flown in America.
What a thrill it is to see a replica of America’s first airplane built 30 years before the Wright Brothers!

James Henry was a resident of Maney’s Neck in Hertford County, near Murfreesboro. On a brisk Sunday afternoon in the Fall of 1873, Gatling, sitting in the cockpit of his invention, with hands and arms furiously turning the cranks of his fan blowers, reportedly glided a little over 100 feet from a platform constructed approximately 12 feet above the ground. As he descended through the trees and bushes before settling in a rather rough and damaged fashion amid an open field, James Henry Gatling put North Carolina, as well as Murfreesboro, on America's aviation map!

Utilizing hand cranks to power fan-like blowers, Gatling's plane embodied features later implemented in the "Wright Flyer" of 1903, such as flexible wings, a movable stabilizer and a vertical rudder at the plane’s tail end.