Dockery Farms Historic District

About this property

Dockery Plantation was a 25,600-acre (104 km2) cotton plantation and sawmill in Dockery, Mississippi, on the Sunflower River between Ruleville and Cleveland, Mississippi. It is widely regarded as the place where Delta blues music was born. Blues musicians resident at Dockery included Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. The plantation was started in 1895 by Will Dockery (1865–1936), a graduate of the University of Mississippi who originally bought the land for its timber but soon recognized the richness of its soil. At the time, much of the Delta area was still a wilderness of cypress and gum trees, roamed by panthers and wolves and plagued with mosquitoes. The land was gradually cleared and drained for cotton cultivation, which encouraged an influx of black labourers. Some became settled sharecroppers, who would work a portion of the land in return for a share of the crop, while others were itinerant workers. Dockery earned a good reputation for treating his workers and sharecroppers fairly and thus attracted workers from throughout the South. Dockery's land was relatively remote, but was opened up for development by a new branch of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, known as the Yellow Dog. Around 1900, Dockery had a rail terminal built on his plantation, so connecting his land with the main rail system at Rosedale. Because of its circuitous route, this local line was known as the "Pea Vine". Dockery Plantation eventually supported over 2,000 workers, who were paid in the plantation's own coins. In addition to the railroad terminal, it had its own plantation store, post office, school, doctor, and churches. The workers’ quarters included boardinghouses, where they lived, socialized and played music on a variety of instruments, including guitars, accordions, banjos, mandolins, and harmonicas. Dockery took no interest in his workers' music, but he made it easy for them to travel and to spend their leisure time as they pleased. Charley Patton and his family are believed to have moved around 1900 to the Dockery Plantation, where he came under the influence of an older musician, Henry Sloan. In turn, Patton became the central figure of a group of blues musicians including Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, and Eddie "Son" House, who played around the local area. Because of its location, central to Sunflower County’s black population of some 35,000 in 1920, the plantation became known as a centre for informal musical entertainment. By the mid-1920s, the group widened to include a younger generation of musicians, including Robert Johnson, Chester "Howlin’ Wolf" Burnett, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards. Some of these were itinerant workers, while others lived more permanently on the farms.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Sunflower County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Sunflower County.

More historic places in Mississippi

Browse all historic places in Mississippi.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Mississippi history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.