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Franklin County, PA
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Created on September 9, 1784 from part of Cumberland
County and named for Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin
Chambers, for whom it was named, founded Chambersburg,
the county seat, in 1764. It was incorporated as a
borough on March 21, 1803.
 Benjamin
Chambers’s settlement in 1730 was the first permanent
settler community. The lower Cumberland Valley was
included in a purchase from the Indians in October 1736,
but this was the scene of heavy Indian fighting in the
period 1756 to 1763. From 1837 on, the Cumberland Valley
Railroad gave the county marketing opportunities.
Franklin has always had an agricultural base, but its
early iron furnaces lost out to competition elsewhere.
Paper, lumber, and crushed stone, however, were
successfully produced. The Confederate Army twice
captured Chambersburg, and the second time, in July
1864, they burned it. In 1920, Franklin was the state’s
seventh ranked agricultural producer, and in 1992 it was
fourth in receipts from livestock and tenth in crops.
Dairying is especially successful. Farms cover 51.6
percent of the land. |
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