History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/3/Counties/Franklin
FRANKLIN COUNTY lies in the third tier south of Minnesota and in the fifth west of the Mississippi River. It contains sixteen townships making an area of five hundred seventy-six square miles, and was named for Benjamin Franklin of Revolutionary fame. The county was created in 1851 and attached to Chickasaw for judicial and election proposes.
In October, 1852, James B. Reeves, John Mayne and Addison Phelps made claims near a creek in the eastern part of the county where they found a fine body of timber. The grove and creek were named for Mr. Mayne. The following year Dr. Aldrich took a claim and built a cabin near where Ackley stands. He sold the claim to Thomas Downs who was frozen to death in 1855 by a fierce blizzard which overtook him while crossing an unsettled prairie. During the summer and fall of 1852 several families made claims along Mayne Creek. In 1853 B. F. White settled near the Iowa River in the western part of the county. In 1854 a report reached the scattered settlers that a band of three hundred hostile Indians was approaching and the families fled for protection to Beaver Grove in Butler County. Upon their return their property was found unmolested. The first school in the county was taught by Mrs. H. J. Mitchell in 1854 in a log cabin at Maynes Grove.
At the August election in 1855 the county was organized by the choice of the following officers: James B. Reeves, judge; S. R. Mitchell, clerk; Isaac Miller, treasurer; and Soloman Staley, sheriff. The first county seat was located by the Commissioners about two miles north of Hampton. On the 7th of April, 1856, the citizens at an election voted to move it to the new town of Benjamin which had been laid out in June, 1856. The name was soon after changed to Hampton which became the permanent county-seat. The first settler in the new town was James Thompson who moved from Vinton early in 1856. Job Gardner and George Ryan donated to the county the undivided half of eighty acres of land upon which Hampton was located in order to secure the county-seat. The first newspaper was the Franklin Record which was established by Stephen M. Jones and M. S. Bowman at Hampton in 1859. The Illinois Central Railroad touches the county on the south while the Iowa Central runs through from south to north.