Uncle Dave Macon

The most widely known citizen of the Kittrell community was "Uncle Dave Macon." David Harrison Macon was born near Smart Station in Warren County in 1870. In 1883 when he was a young boy, his parents moved to Nashville and ran the Broadway Hotel. After his father died, his mother sold the hotel in 1886 and bought the Charles Ready farm at Readyville.

In 1889 he married Miss Matilda Richardson and moved to a farm in the Kittrell community where he lived until his death in 1952. In 1901, in addition to farming, he started a wagon freight line from Murfreesboro to Woodbury. He had two wagons. Hatton Sanfrod drove one, and he drove the other until Archie, the oldest of his seven sons, was big enough to help.

They went to Woodbury one day and to Murfreesboro the next, handling and delivering materials all along the way. He knew every man, woman, and child along the twenty mile route and kept up with everything that happened. When a truck line started in 1920, Mr. Macon decided it was time to stop his wagons.

He always loved to sing and play the banjo. After the boys go big enough to help with the freight line, he had more time on his hands.

On rainy days he would take his banjo to the neighborhood store and entertain all who came by. Soon he started going to schools on Friday afternoons. School children began calling him "Uncle Dave."

It was not long until he was called on to help raise money with school programs, box suppers, pie suppers, cake walks, picnics, and all kinds of community affairs. If it were advertised that "Uncle Dave Macon" was going to be on a program, there was sure to be a crowd, for everyone loved his humor and ready wit as well as his music.

In the early twenties he played some at Lowe's Theatre. In 1924 he went to Knoxville and did his first recording.

When the "Solemn Ole Judge," Mr. George Hay, started the WSM "Grand Ole Opry" in 1925, Uncle Dave Macon became one of the first artists on the program.

During the next twenty-seven years he seldom missed a Saturday night being there. He began calling himself "The Dixie Dew Drop."

He was one of the first Grand Ole Opry artists to begin a traveling program during the week. He went all over the South, New Orleans, Atlanta, Birmingham, Mobile, and many small towns, also New York and other northern cities. He drew large crowds wherever he went.

He was a member of Haynes Chapel Methodist Church. He died of pneumonia in 1952. He is buried in the Coleman Cemetery on the Woodbury Road. One hundred and twenty-five Grand Ole Opry stars contributed to the erection of a three thousand ton granite monument to his memory beside the highway on top of the hill overlooking Woodbury.

Today his name stands among the great of the music world in Nashville where a plaque has been placed in his honor in the Grand Ole Opry Hall of Fame.

Kittrell | Rutherford County | Tennessee

Source: Rutherford County Historical Society, Publication No. 2, winter, 1973.
(Sources: Interviews with Mr. Archie Macon and Mrs. Ruth Wood; Magazine Section, Nashville Tennessean.)