The Lost State of Franklin
You’d be surprised what you can learn about your family and how they participated in history.
For instance, have you ever heard of a U.S. state called “Franklin?”
In what is far eastern Tennessee, an area that was North Carolina until 1796, a group of settlers petitioned in 1787 to create their own state, named for Benjamin Franklin. Although they didn’t ask him first.
This was not a usual group of settlers. These were the confident ‘Overmountain Men’—settlers of mainly Scots-Irish descent who had openly defied the British Proclamation of 1763 banning white settlements to the west of the Appalachians. Living along the Holston and Watauga rivers, in constant danger from attacks from the Native Americans in the area, they created a self-governing settlement, the Watauga Association.
Author Dale Van Every, in Ark of Empire, described these settlers as “irrepressible…During their twenty year march down the Holston, they had repeatedly violated royal decrees, the proclamations of provincial governors, and the terms of successive treaties with the Cherokee.”
This same group of men came to the aid of the American forces in the Revolutionary War at the battle of Kings Mountain.
When the Americans won the revolution, the Wataugans, cut off from the distant North Carolina government, saw the opportunity to seize land that the British had vacated and continue to manage themselves. So, they proposed their own state—Franklin, covering what is now northeast Tennessee.
But the proposal had to be approved by the North Carolina legislature, and all other existing states. More than half the states voted in favor, but it fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority. The area became part of Tennessee when it was formed in 1796.
The settlers’ petition to become a state is part of the records of North Carolina. Several hundred settlers signed. My 4th great grandfather, William Padfield, age 22, signed it, right after his future in-laws, the Tadlocks. William and wife Mary Tadlock later went on to help settle Hopkinsville, KY, then St. Clair County, Illinois—a lifetime of living on the edge of the frontier.
If you’d like to find out how your ancestors exercised their rights as citizens, I’d love to help. Reach out at www.heritagebridge.com/contact-us.
Sources:
Michael J. Trinklein, An Astounding Atlas of Altered States, (New York: Chartwell Books, 2017).
Dale Van Every, Ark of Empire, The American Frontier, 1784-1803, (New York: William Morrow, 1963).
The Annals of Tennessee:
https://archive.org/details/staterecordsnor00librgoog/page/n718/mode/2up