Franklin is a city in and county seat of Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. About 21 miles (34 km) south of Nashville, it is one of the principal cities of the Nashville metropolitan area and Middle Tennessee. As of 2020, its population was 83,454. It is the seventh-largest city in Tennessee. Franklin is known to be the home of many celebrities, mostly country music stars.
The city developed on both sides of the Harpeth River, a tributary of the Cumberland River. In the 19th century, Franklin (as the county seat) was the trading and judicial center for primarily rural Williamson County and remained so well into the 20th century as the county remained rural and agricultural in nature.
Since 1980, areas of northern Franklin have been developed for residential and related businesses, in addition to modern service industries. The population has increased rapidly as growth moved in all directions from the core. Despite recent growth and development, Franklin is noted for its many older buildings and neighborhoods, which are protected by city ordinances.
The City of Franklin was founded October 26, 1799, by Abram Maury Jr. (1766–1825). Later a state senator, he is buried with his family in the current Founders Pointe neighborhood. Maury named the town after national founding father Benjamin Franklin.
Ewen Cameron built a log house in 1798, the first in the new settlement. Cameron was born February 23, 1768, in Bogallan, Ferintosh, Scotland. He emigrated to Virginia in 1785 and came to Tennessee shortly after it was admitted to the Union. Cameron died on February 28, 1846, after living 48 years in the same house. He and his second wife, Mary, were buried in the old City Cemetery. Some of his descendants continue to live in Franklin.
This area is part of Middle Tennessee, and farmers prospered in the pre-Civil War years, with the cultivation of tobacco and hemp as commodity crops, and raising of livestock.
During the Civil War, Tennessee was occupied by Union troops from 1862. Franklin was the site of a major battle in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign. The Second Battle of Franklin was fought on November 30, 1864, resulting in almost 10,000 casualties (killed, wounded, captured, and missing). Forty-four buildings were temporarily converted to use as field hospitals. The Carter, Carnton, and the Lotz houses from this era are still standing and are among the city's numerous examples of period architecture.
On July 6, 1867, a political rally of Union League Black Republicans in Franklin was disrupted by Conservatives, who were mostly White but included some Blacks. Later that evening, what became known as the "Franklin Riot" broke out. Black Union League men were ambushed by Whites at the town square and returned fire. An estimated 25 to 39 men were wounded, most of them Black. One White man was killed outright, and at least three Black people died of wounds soon after the confrontation.
On August 15, 1868, in Franklin, Samuel Bierfield became the first Jewish man to be lynched in the United States. He was fatally shot by a large group of masked men believed to be KKK members. They attacked him for treating Blacks equally to Whites in his store. Bowman, a Black man who worked for Bierfield and was with him at his store, was wounded in the attack and soon died.
After the Reconstruction era, violence continued against African Americans, rising toward the turn of the century. Five African Americans were lynched in Williamson County from 1877 to 1950, most during the decades around the turn of the century, a time of high social tensions and legal racial oppression in the South. These murders took place in Franklin, when men were taken from the courthouse or county jail before trial. Among them was Amos Miller, a 23-year-old Black man who was forcibly taken from the courtroom by a White mob during his 1888 trial in a sexual assault case, and hanged from the railings of the balcony of the county courthouse. The alleged victim was a 50-year-old woman. On April 30, 1891, Jim Taylor, another African American man, was lynched on Murfreesboro Road in Franklin by another mob, accused of killing a White man.
A memorial to Confederate soldiers was erected in 1899 by fourteen women of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Confederate soldiers, including the 6,125 casualties of the Battle of Franklin. A news report described how as the last piece of the statue was being raised, a buggy ran into a rope, causing the statue to swing into the shaft, breaking out a piece from the hat of the figure. This event has given rise to the monument's nickname by many of "Chip.
Population growth slowed noticeably from 1910 to 1940 (see table in Demographics section), as many African Americans left the area in the Great Migration to northern industrial cities for jobs and to escape Jim Crow conditions.
Here is a local Business that supports the community
Google Map- https://maps.app.goo.gl/SXhf1qSa5xSbNCWV9
1334 Holly Tree Gap Rd Brentwood, TN 37027
Be sure to check out this attraction too!