Franklin

The founding record

Franklin township was erected in March, 1789, from the old town-, ship of Tyrone, and was the first new township to be established after the organization of Huntingdon county. It extends from the Center county line on the northeast to the Little Juniata river on the southwest, and from Warriors Mark township on the northwest to the summit of Tussey's mountain on the southeast. Among the early settlers were Alexander Ewing, Zephaniah Weakland, George Mattem, Jacob Miner, Abraham Sells, Richard Ricketts, James Hunter, James Armitage and the Hendersons. The township has rich deposits of iron ore, which were first worked about 1795 or 1796, when the Huntingdon furnace was built in the midst of the ore beds and the Pennsylvania furnace in the northern part of the township, near the Center county line. Spruce creek rises in this township and flows almost the entire length of it, emptying into the Little Juniata. The water power of this stream was utilized as early as 1785 to run what was long known as the old Bebault mill. Many years later W. D. & J. D. Isett established the Stockdale Woolen Mills at the mouth of the stream and about a mile farther up J. Q. Adams started an ax factory. Franklinville and Graysville are the principal villages. John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 185,735 of the scanned text

Quoted from a work published before 1929 and therefore in the public domain in the United States. Spelling and punctuation are as printed, including nineteenth century spellings of place names. Scanned text carries optical character recognition errors; the character offset is given so the passage can be found and checked in the original.