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While Brad Davenport has taken up the reins of Manchester Farm Bureau Insurance following the retirement of former Agency Manager Mark McBride late last year, Davenport is no stranger to Manchester or the Coffee County community.

While Davenport began his Farm Bureau Insurance career in 2001 in Tullahoma before spending 13 years as an agent at the Manchester Farm Bureau, he had been serving as agency manager at a Farm Bureau Insurance office in Cannon County for the past four years.

“I am coming home,” he said. “I never moved. I have lived here. My daughter is a senior in high school at Coffee County, we go to church here so my world was really here.”

“Cannon County is a fine county with a lot of fine people, I miss a lot of people up there but this is home,” Davenport added.

When it comes to succeeding McBride as agency manager of Manchester Farm Bureau Insurance, Davenport said he knows he is succeeding someone who steered the agency well for many years and is well respected in the community.

“There are so many I’s to dot and T’s to cross in order to get ready and Mark has left some very big shoes to fill,” he said. “Mark McBride, he was always a father figure to me and we had a very good friendship, still do, and so I am looking forward to being in his place.”

Married for 20 years and the father of three children, Davenport is a native of Celina, Tennessee and a second-generation Farm Bureau Insurance agent.

Despite his heritage, Davenport said a career with Farm Bureau was something he did not initially see for himself when he was growing up.

After graduating from Tennessee Tech with a degree in manufacturing management, Davenport began work for a company, but soon found out he was not happy there.

It was then that he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and began his career with Farm Bureau Insurance.

Davenport said there is a significant amount of experience between the agents at Farm Bureau Insurance and he is enjoying working in Manchester again.

“I am just looking forward to getting back out in the community and helping promote agriculture and helping promote insurance,” he said. “It has always said “sales” next to my name, but I have never seen myself as a salesmen. I have always seen myself more as an educator.”

While some describe Manchester as a small town, coming from a hometown of less than 1,500 people makes Manchester a larger town to Davenport.

“I have always explained Manchester as a larger town,” Davenport said. “Most people think it is not, but it is to me, but it is a larger town with a small town feel.”