Sociable at Banning mansion is a chance for visitors to turn back the clock.

Usually, when people visit the sumptuous Phineas Banning mansion in Wilmington, it’s on a tour: A well-informed guide tells them all about the founder of Wilmington, who built the house in 1864 and lived there with his family.

But on Sunday afternoon, visitors to the home and its lush grounds may find themselves feeling a little like a Banning guest on a tranquil afternoon more than 100 years ago.

The Greek Revival house, with its spacious rooms and heirloom furnishings, will be open as usual. But a woman will be seated on the back porch snapping beans, and someone will be playing a dulcimer.

On the tree-shaded grounds, a blacksmith will be at work; clog dancers will perform Appalachian dances, and a barbershop quartet will harmonize. The way people in the 19th Century made such treats as ice cream and such necessities as quilts, soap and rope will be demonstrated.

“An Old-Fashioned Summer Sociable,” as the event is called, is meant to show what life was like when the mansion was a family home, according to Julia Heard, who heads the Banning Residence Museum’s volunteers and is chairman of the event. “We want to show that this was a living house, not a museum,” she said.

Famous for what they called their “entertainments,” the Bannings enjoyed inviting people to their estate and sometimes had dancing and musicians in front of the house, Heard said. This was the era of ranching, and guests came from long distances, sometimes staying overnight in the house or in tents pitched on the grounds.

Sunday’s sociable won’t be quite as long as the Banning entertainments were, but museum volunteers--some of them dressed in period clothes--plan to squeeze a lot of events into three hours. There’ll even be a tribute to the patriarch himself. Banning would have turned 160 last Sunday, and the event will be celebrated with cake and a round of “Happy Birthday.”

Besides watching demonstrations of homemaking in the last century, visitors can try their hand at a few things. They can make rope, soap and clothespin dolls; crank ice cream, churn butter, and wash clothes on a scrub-board.

Out on the lawn, children may entertain themselves with such 19th-Century games as rolling barrel hoops with a stick, shooting marbles, engaging in egg and spoon races and playing pin the tail on the donkey.

Inside the mansion, a collection of 18 quilts, all made before 1900, will be shown on beds and draped across chairs, as they might have been when the home was lived in. Victorian hats also will be on view.

Walking through the big door of the Banning carriage house--which still has its horse stalls and original sturdy floor--visitors will encounter 10 meticulously restored carriages, buggies and carts. Included is an authentic surrey with the fringe on top. According to Heard, the fringe was not for decoration--it kept the bugs away.

Don Blanks, a blacksmith and carriage restorer, spent a year and a half getting the vehicles to look as if they were made yesterday. He’ll be giving the smithing demonstration Sunday, making cowbells and harness hooks, and relating the history of smithing as he works.

The blacksmith was one of the most important people in town when horse-drawn wagons and plows reigned supreme, Blanks said. “In small towns, he was sent for before the doctor was. If the wheels don’t roll, the farmer can’t farm. He was the fix-it man of the 1900s,” he said.

This Sunday’s old-fashioned sociable is the first one that the Banning museum has sponsored, and there are plans to make it an annual party. The museum has wanted to hold a summer event and was encouraged by the success of its annual Victorian Christmas, which usually draws about 1,500 people. That kind of turnout is not expected for a brand-new event, but the museum is hoping for up to 400 people.

Heard said: “We want people to go away thinking what life was like in the 19th Century, yet to know how many traditions we are carrying on, such as the family getting together and doing chores together.”