DeVault Tavern

The tavern is a Federal-style brick building of 1821 with Flemish bond brickwork on a limestone foundation and two-story wood porches. Under the eaves and around the porch is hand-carved detail that resembles honeycomb, a feature found on several early Washington County houses. It stood on the Great Stage Road between Abingdon and Knoxville, and Andrew Jackson is said to have stayed here, as did Confederate General John Hunt Morgan on the night before his death. It was listed on the National Register in 1973, and an animal sanctuary now operates on the property.

What the plaque says

DeVault Tavern / Warner Institute Two and one-half miles west stands the two-story brick tavern finished in 1821 by Fredrick DeVault. It served as a stage coach stop on the eastern route from Abingdon, VA., to Nashville. This route ran from through Bloutville, Jonesboro, Greeneville, Newport, Dandridge, to Knoxville. The original bar remains unchanged in the building today.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — steps away
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 10 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 11 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• Warner Institute — steps away
• Thomas Emmerson — steps away
• Chester Inn — 0.3 mi
• Christopher Taylor House — 0.3 mi