John Wood Dodge

Dodge paid for his Pomona orchard with painting. After buying it in 1845 he financed it with large dioramas, shown with illumination in Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Louisville, New York and Hartford. Photography later cut into his miniature trade, so he tinted photographs. A Unionist, he left Tennessee in 1861 and reached New York destitute, and in 1865 President Andrew Johnson sat for him. About 1869 he moved to Chicago, then returned to Pomona in 1889 and kept working in various media until shortly before he died.

What the plaque says

John Wood Dodge Born in New York City, dodge was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1832 on the basis of his miniature portraits. Dodge and his family moved to Nashville in 1840, where he painted miniatures, including some on ivory of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. In 1845, the family bought this tract of 5000 acres in Cumberland County, constructed a log house and planted thousands of apple trees, naming this estate Pomona. He continued to paint, completing four large painting covering two hundred square fee of canvas. One was a scene of New York, another was the interior of St. Peter's in Rome. At the beginning of the Civil War, Dodge feared for his family's safety and moved to New York. In 1889, the family returned to Cumberland County and built several houses in Victorian styles. Dodge continued to paint portraits, landscapes, and miniatures. He died in 1883 and is buried in Cumberland County.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cumberland Homesteads and the Homesteads Tower — 8.2 mi
  The largest of the New Deal's subsistence homestead communities, a plateau district of Crab Orchard sandstone houses around an octagonal stone tower that now holds a museum.
• Muddy Pond Mennonite Community — 18 mi
  A Mennonite farming community in Overton County near Monterey, known for sorghum syrup pressed and boiled each fall and for the farm stores along its roads.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 24 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Cookeville Depot Museum — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Camp Crossville — 2.0 mi
• Cumberland Mountain State Park Bridge — 7.5 mi
• Earl Webb: Baseball Record Holder — 11 mi
• Kemmer Stand/Tavern — 12 mi