Franklin County, Tennessee

Franklin County History, Geography, Demographics, Cities and Towns, and Education

County Seat: Winchester
Year Organized: 1807
Square Miles: 553

Court House:

1 South Jefferson Street
County Courthouse
Winchester, TN 37398-2620

Etymology - Origin of County Name

Named in honor of Benjamin Franklin (1706- 1790), American printer, diplomat, author, philosopher, scientist, statesman and member of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.

Demographics:

County QuickFacts: Census Bureau Quick Facts

History of Franklin County

Created 1807 from Rutherford County and Indian lands; named in honor of Benjamin Franklin (1706- 1790), American printer, diplomat, author, philosopher, scientist, statesman and member of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence.

Franklin County was formed in 1807 from Rutherford County and Indian lands. (Acts of Tennessee 1807, Chapter 72).

Find more from the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture: FRANKLIN COUNTY

Geography

Franklin is one of Tennessee's southern tier of counties and abuts the Alabama border. It has a varied geography, extending from the southeast corner of the Nashville Basin over the Highland Rim and up onto the Cumberland Plateau, for a difference in elevation of about 1300 ft. The county is well watered and forested, and except for the steeper areas of the plateau is well suited for agriculture, having a long growing season and mild winters.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 576 square miles (1,491 km²), of which, 555 square miles (1,436 km²) of it is land and 21 square miles (55 km²) of it (3.69%) is water.

Neighboring Counties:

Coffee County (north)
Grundy County (northeast)
Marion County (east)
Jackson County, Alabama (south)
Madison County, Alabama (southwest)
Lincoln County (west)
Moore County (northwest)

Cities and Towns:

- Cowan	city	Incorporated Area
- Decherd	city	Incorporated Area
- Estill Springs	town	Incorporated Area
- Huntland	town	Incorporated Area
- Winchester (County Seat)	city	Incorporated Area

County Resources:

Enter County Resources and Information Here

County Resources

The history of our nation was a prolonged struggle to define the relative roles and powers of our governments: federal, state, and local. And the names given the counties, our most locally based jurisdictions, reflects the "characteristic features of this country!"

But age, size and colorful names of our counties isn't the only reason to explore counties' role in American history, or the history of county government itself. In fact, the story of county government reflects the larger meanings of American history.

Today's counties are the most flexible, locally responsive and creative governments in the US. They are the most diverse, varying in size, population, geography, and governmental structure. In their politics and policies, they express a 1990's political slogan "Think globally, act locally."