Isaac Dockery

Dockery was born free in the Jones Cove community and was working as a merchant's clerk in Sevierville when the Civil War came. Confederate soldiers are said to have dragged him through the streets because he would not reveal where a Union colonel, McKendree Thomas, was hiding. After the war he married Charlotte Thomas, who had been enslaved in the same household, and built a kiln near Middle Creek. He pressed his initials, I D, into his bricks, and he taught the trade to sons, sons-in-law and grandsons, among them Fred McMahan.

What the plaque says

Isaac Dockery 1832-1910 A native of Sevier County, Isaac Dockery, an African-American brick maker and mason, established brick kilns near Sevierville. After the Civil War, he built or made bricks for many buildings in Sevierville including the Masonic Lodge (1893), New Salem Baptist Church (1886), and the Sevier County Courthouse (1896). A talented master builder, he taught several generations of local brick masons.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Newfound Gap — 19 mi
  The lowest drivable pass through the Smokies, at 5,046 feet on the Tennessee and North Carolina line, where Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940 and Kuwohi's Cherokee name was restored in 2024.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 20 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.
• Blount Mansion — 21 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Cades Cove — 22 mi
  A Smokies valley ringed by mountains, once the Cherokee hunting ground of Tsiyahi and later a farming community of 685 people, kept by the park after its families were bought out.

More markers nearby

• The McMahan Indian Mound — 0.3 mi
• John Porter McCown — 0.6 mi
• New Salem Baptist Church — 0.9 mi
• Lewis C. Buckner — 1.2 mi