DeKalb County in the Civil War

The man who led this county's Unionists had held people in slavery himself. William B. Stokes, born in Chatham County, North Carolina, in 1814, grew up in Smith County after his father was killed on the family's journey west, and enslaved roughly seven to ten people before the war. He sat in both houses of the legislature, the Senate as a Know-Nothing, and went to Congress in 1859. After commanding the 5th Tennessee Cavalry, he returned to Congress in 1866 as a Radical Republican who organized Black support for reunion on Congress's terms. He died at Alexandria in 1897.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Burgess Falls State Park — 13 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Rock Island State Park — 14 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 22 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 25 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Snow Hill — 7.1 mi
• Adam Dale — 9.2 mi
• Center Hill Dam / Center Hill Powerhouse — 9.6 mi
• Buffalo Valley School — 13 mi