Nathaniel Macon Home & Grave

A Forgotten National Name

Location


View Larger Map

Other maps: Bing, Google, MapQuest.
Coordinates: 36.4807, -77.9974.

Type: Stop
Tour: Rebellion
County: Warren

Access LogoFull

The coordinates place you in the lot at Buck Springs Park. If you like, walk to the tiny wooden building off the far-left side of the parking lot loop, Macon’s mostly reconstructed home on the original site.

A Rich Man’s Tiny Home

Portrait of a balding man with a white cravat and blue, 19th-Century coat
(Credit: U.S. House of Representatives collection.)

Here lived and died the most famous North Carolinian you never heard of. Nathaniel Macon was attending what now is Princeton University and serving in the militia there when the Revolutionary War broke out. He returned home and studied law for three years. Macon then joined the Warren County militia in his brother’s company as a private in 1780, refusing the offer of a higher rank. From a wealthy family, he also turned down pay, as well as a veteran’s pension when those were offered decades later.

Macon fought in the terrible American defeat at the Battle of Camden (S.C.) that year, but escaped capture. While encamped with the remains of the army afterwards, he received word he had been elected to the state senate at age 22. He refused to leave at first, but was eventually convinced to go. He was in the senate for the rest of the