Historic Sites in Franklin County

The history of Franklin County

Franklin County, created in 1784 and named for Benjamin Franklin, was, with Washington County, one of the first two counties Georgia established after the Revolutionary War. It was organized on land claimed from the Cherokee through the 1783 Treaty of Augusta, in country where the naturalist William Bartram had encountered Lower Cherokee communities a decade earlier, and part of its original territory went to South Carolina in 1787. Carnesville, the county seat, was incorporated in 1807. Courthouses were built there in 1793 and 1826, and the present neoclassical revival courthouse was completed in 1906. New towns appeared in the late nineteenth century, including Canon, founded as West Bowerville in 1875, Lavonia, established around 1878, and Royston, incorporated in 1879. Franklin Springs was a health resort before the Civil War and later became home to Emmanuel College under the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Cromer's Mill Covered Bridge, built in 1906 and 1907 over Nails Creek, remains one of the county's best-known landmarks. Baseball great Ty Cobb came from Royston and donated money to build a hospital, and the county also produced Governor Ernest Vandiver and D. W. Brooks, founder of the farm cooperative Gold Kist.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.org