Franklin County History

Historical Resources

Index to Probate Cases Filed in Texas, Franklin County

(We would love to have this transcribed.)

Purley as I Remember It

Franklin County Background

Soon after the area opened to settlement following the Texas Revolution, the last Indian massacre in the eastern half of the state occurred on April 10, 1841, just east of the town of Mt. Vernon. Settlers from a seventy-mile radius gathered together and attacked most of the Indians within a hundred miles, effectively driving the few remaining Indians out of the eastern half of the state. Ambrose Ripley, who lost eight children in the raid, petitioned the Congress of the Republic for his losses in “the defense of the frontiers of the Republic.”

By 1848, both Gray Rock and Mt. Vernon had been awarded post offices.

County records in Franklin County go back to 1836. When the county was organized, clerks were sent to transcribe the land records relating to Franklin County land in both Red River and Titus Counties. Invaluable genealogical records are preserved in the county as a result of this effort. When the Titus County courthouse burned in 1895, the records were lost there for all time except for those copied into Franklin County records.

County population was strengthened by an influx from Tennessee, largely of Virginia and North Carolina stock, and by a second influx from South Carolina via Alabama and Mississippi. By 1850 there were perhaps 2,000 people in the county, and that number doubled by 1860.

All families suffered during the Civil War, and half the resident adult male population died or was killed in the hardships of that time. A migration after the war saw the county population double, and by 1900 the U.S. census recorded 7,000 people in the county.

The population grew until the 1920s, when it began a downward pattern with the shifts brought by the urbanization of America. It was not until after the dam was closed on Lake Cypress Springs in 1972 that the county again saw population growth, and the population did not approach the 1900 numbers again until the 1980 census was taken.

Historic Images