Carthage: County Seat Named for a Lost Empire

Carthage is the county seat of Moore County, North Carolina, a small Sandhills town that traces its founding to seventeen ninety-six, when the state legislature designated a county seat here. The name echoes the ancient North African city that rivaled Rome, a somewhat grand choice for a backcountry courthouse town, but naming places for classical cities was a fashion of the early republic. Moore County itself was formed in seventeen eighty-four and named for Alfred Moore, a Revolutionary War officer who later served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The courthouse itself did not move to Carthage until eighteen fourteen. The town sits a few miles from Pinehurst and Southern Pines, and the Sandhills region around it has become one of the best-known golf destinations in the country.