PHOTO: The first firefighting apparatus of the Plummer Hook & Ladder Company—an 1890s horse- or mule-drawn wooden wagon that carried equipment including buckets used to haul water to fires—returned home last week nearly 20 years after a promise was made to establish a museum to honor the legacy of the department’s founding members and the volunteers who followed. “It’s a fulfillment of a dream to finally get it back to Warrenton,” said Walter Gardner, the town’s mayor. “We have worked a long time to make all the arrangements since 2004 to make (this) a possibility.” Established in 1868, the Plummer Hook & Ladder Company was Warren County’s first fire department and is recognized by North Carolina as the state’s longest continuously serving African-American volunteer fire department. It was later known as the Warrenton Volunteer Fire Department and merged with Warrenton Rural VFD in 2004.