Editing Franklin County, Tennessee (section)

==History==
White settlement began around 1800, and the county was formally organized in 1807 and named for [[Benjamin Franklin]].<ref name=tehc>John Abernathy Smith, "[http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=506 Franklin County]," ''Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture''. Retrieved: June 28, 2013.</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ | title=The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States | publisher=Govt. Print. Off. | author=Gannett, Henry | year=1905 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_9V1IAAAAMAAJ/page/n120 131]}}</ref>  During the next several decades, the size of the county was reduced several times by reorganizations which created the neighboring counties of [[Coffee County, Tennessee|Coffee County]], [[Moore County, Tennessee|Moore County]], and [[Grundy County, Tennessee|Grundy County]]. One of the most notable early settlers was frontiersman [[Davy Crockett]], who came about 1812 but is not thought to have remained long.<ref name=tehc />

The [[Sewanee, The University of the South|University of the South]], founded by the Episcopal Church, was organized just before the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]. It began full operations shortly after hostilities ceased. It encompasses a full university and theological seminary. The University of Tennessee Space Institute is also located in the county.

The area became strongly [[secessionist]] before the war. Franklin County formally threatened to [[Secession|secede]] from Tennessee and join [[Alabama]] if Tennessee did not leave the union, which the state did when forced to take sides by Abraham Lincoln.<ref name=tehc /> This contrasted sharply with the situation in not distant [[Winston County, Alabama]], which was largely pro-Union and provided more volunteers for the Union than the Confederacy.

During 1863, the [[Army of Tennessee]] retreated through the county, leaving it more or less under Union control for the rest of the war, although some guerrilla warfare still took place. [[Isham G. Harris]], the Confederate governor of Tennessee, was from Franklin County. After having his political rights restored after the war, he was chosen to represent the state in the [[United States Senate]].

During the [[Temperance movement|temperance]] (anti-liquor) agitations of the late 19th century, residents discovered that by a quirk of state law, liquor could be sold only in [[municipal corporation|incorporated town]]s. As a result, all of the county's towns abolished their charters in order to prohibit the sale of alcohol.<ref name=tehc />

In the 20th century, Franklin County benefited from the flood control and power generation activities of the [[Tennessee Valley Authority]] (TVA), built by the President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] administration during the [[Great Depression]]. The TVA helped bring new industry to the area. It also created opportunities for water recreation by making new lakes, but at the same time also displaced many county residents from their soon to be submerged homes. The establishment of the federal [[Arnold Engineering Development Center]], which is partly within the county, helped spur economic growth and technical development. The [[interstate highway]] system barely touched the county, but it did provide valuable access on [[Interstate 24 in Tennessee|Interstate 24]] to nearby [[Chattanooga, Tennessee|Chattanooga]].

Two notable figures who were born in the county early in the twentieth century were singer/entertainer [[Dinah Shore]] and entrepreneur/philanthropist [[John Templeton]]. He later became a British subject and was awarded a [[knighthood]].

During the last decades of the 19th and the first of the 20th, Tennessee, like other southern states, passed laws and constitutional amendments establishing [[Jim Crow law|Jim Crow]]: [[racial segregation]] in public facilities, restrictions of voting for blacks, and similar measures. There were few violent disturbances in Franklin County compared to many other localities, but it was not until a decade after the historic ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' court decision that the county's schools were [[desegregated]] in 1964 when [[Sewanee Elementary School|a lawsuit was won in Sewanee, Tennessee.]]

Considerable industrial growth occurred in the county in the last decades of the 20th century, including the construction of a large automobile engine plant by the [[Nissan]] corporation in [[Decherd, Tennessee|Decherd]]. An emphasis on tourism also developed, based on Civil War history and local scenic attractions such as the [[dogwood]] forests, for which an annual festival is held.