Dan “Uncle Dan” McLennan was born in 1849 as a slave to Neil McLennan in what would a year later become known as McLennan County, named for his master. Uncle Dan became a beloved member of not only the McLennan family but of the Waco community as well. He is best remembered for his fiddle playing, carrying his instrument around town with him in a flour sack.

Life on the frontier provided a variety of challenges for Uncle Dan and his family. Uncle Dan’s father, Alf, also lived as a slave of the McLennan family and lost his ear when Native Americans attacked the McLennan farm. Uncle Dan himself, living as a slave in the backwoods of Texas, experienced several encounters with Indians, though all peaceful. As a boy, he learned to fish as well as hunt squirrels, raccoons, possums, and even deer, helping the family survive on the frontier.

Even after gaining his freedom at the end of the Civil War, Dan remained closely connected to the McLennan family. He was especially loyal to Catherine McLennan Davis, the daughter of Neil McLennan. According to Uncle Dan’s daughter, Mrs. Davis took Dan under her wing, becoming a mother of sorts to him. Catherine taught him to read and write, a rare skill for a born slave. In 1870, on Catherine’s farm, Dan married Ann, who would come to be known as Aunt Ann. They had twelve children, six boys and six girls, in their fifty years of marriage.

On a few occasions, Dan went on cattle drives with the McLennan/Davis family. He rode up to Kansas, bringing cattle down with him. Though he worked for a time on Davis land, Dan became a successful farmer in his own right, working his own farm. The family grew subsistence crops to live off of, as well as cash crops such as cotton.

Living in China Spring, Uncle Dan and his family frequently made the slow journey to Waco by horse-pulled wagon. Often the family would return home the same day, leaving at sunset and finding their way back in the dark. Several of Dan’s family members lived in Waco, and on occasion the family stayed overnight with one of his brothers who owned a saloon in town. In Waco, Uncle Dan was in high demand due to his great talent for fiddling. He often found himself hired by white families to play at picnics, reunions, and other celebrations. These festivities were large, all-day affairs, complete with music, singing, dancing, and piles of food. Sometimes Dan’s sons, also musically inclined, would accompany him, playing guitar alongside his fiddling.

Uncle Dan died in 1919 at the age of seventy-one. During his lifetime, he witnessed a monumental amount of change. Waco and McLennan County were founded, and Waco blossomed from a village into a thriving city with nearly forty thousand residents. Born a slave, he experienced emancipation, dying a free man. He lived during a time of great transformation and the strife which came with it. Though a great deal of racial violence and tensions occurred during his lifetime, he was much loved by both whites and blacks in Waco and McLennan County. Uncle Dan and Aunt Ann are buried in unmarked, concrete-covered graves in a corner of the L. R. Davis Cemetery (as marked on the Waco History map) in China Spring.

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For nearly half a century, cotton reigned as king of Waco's economy, establishing the once small frontier town as a thriving urban center known throughout the country.

The area later named Waco held a long history of agricultural pursuits tracing back to the Waco Indians' farming of crops such as melons, pumpkins, lima beans, and corn. Cotton farming and plantation culture arrived in Waco along with the first white settlers of McLennan County. Initially hesitant to plant crops in the black soil found in Central Texas, these settlers soon found the alluvial soil of the Brazos Valley and blackland prairie ideal for growing cotton.

Prior to the Civil War, cotton production in McLennan County remained relatively small. Without a means to transport the product with ease throughout the country, there was little reason to produce large amounts of cotton. Additionally, although farmers sought to recreate southern plantation life in Waco, legal restrictions placed on the number of slaves a landlord could bring into Texas prevented large-scale plantations from developing.

Cotton production slowed with the dawn of the Civil War as most Wacoans, supporting secession, left to fight. The price of cotton fell and shipments to Europe stopped completely when the Union blocked established trade routes out of the South. Yet this setback ultimately turned into Waco's first step toward industrialization when, during his search to secure passage for the crop, John Baylis Earle acquired equipment for a cotton mill in England, disassembled it, and smuggled it into Waco via Mexico. The new mill freed up considerable time for women who had previously spent hours sewing and spinning cotton.

The defeat of the South in 1865 and subsequent emancipation of slaves completely restructured plantation life. Although some freedmen left Waco, many remained in the area in altered relationships with their former owners. The large number of people desiring to farm a limited amount of land led to a new hierarchy. Unable to pay all of their former slaves a fair wage, landowners rented pieces of land to tenants and sharecroppers in exchange for a portion of the crop and profit at the end of the growing season.

The cotton industry industrialized and grew considerably in Waco during this period immediately following the Civil War. The construction of the Waco Suspension Bridge and arrival of the Waco Tap Railroad in 1870 increased the number of people and goods entering and departing the city. Waco's cotton market boomed, and by 1885, the city became known as the largest inland cotton market in Texas. When a second railroad connection arrived, it was named the Cotton Belt Route in honor of the large market to which it primarily catered.

Life in Waco came to revolve around the crop which had earned the town the name of King Cotton. Bankers loaned money against cotton crops, and the city economy boomed along with farmers' prosperity. Brokers from other states and nations opened offices in the city. Each fall, farmers from the surrounding counties arrived in the town square at daybreak to display bales for classification and sale. In 1894, the city instituted the grand annual festival named the Cotton Palace Exposition in order to honor and celebrate the central role of the crop in the local economy.

By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the cotton industry reached its peak and was already beginning a steady decline, largely due to the diversification of agriculture as well as the depletion of soil nutrients. Although no longer the enormous market force it once represented, cotton continued to play an important role in Waco's economy throughout the twentieth century, with small numbers of farmers growing cotton and local merchants continuing to offer rewards for the first bale of cotton each season. Today, small cotton farms can be seen in the countryside surrounding the city, and the legacy of the crop which once made Waco a center of the South is visible in landmarks around town such as Cottonland Castle, the silos of the old cotton oil mill, and the site of the Texas Cotton Palace.

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