Franklin County
Mt. Vernon, Franklin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Titus County, created March 8, 1875; organized April 30, 1875. Named in honor of Benjamin C. Franklin, 1805-1873, hero of San Jacinto, district judge of the Republic of Texas, member of the Legislature. Mt. Vernon, county seat. (1936)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Franklin County was carved from Titus County and organized in the spring of 1875, with Mt. Vernon as its seat. It honors Benjamin C. Franklin (1805-1873), a hero of the Battle of San Jacinto who went on to serve as a district judge under the Republic of Texas and as a legislator.
Why it matters
The county's creation and its namesake tie the ordinary machinery of local government back to the revolutionary generation that won Texas independence.
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Related people
- · Benjamin C. Franklin
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon, TX
This Methodist congregation organized in 1855 with thirteen charter members, first meeting in Joe Wylie Parchman's home south of town, then in a Masonic hall, before buying this site and building a meetinghouse in 1875. Successively larger buildings followed—a frame church in 1896–97, the present edifice in 1930, and an education building in 1953. Over its long life the church has sent at least four of its own men into the ministry.
First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon
Mt. Vernon, TX
Organized on October 5, 1849, under the Baptist missionary William M. Pickett, this congregation first gathered in a log building east of what is now the Franklin County Courthouse, only a year after the Mount Vernon post office opened. Originally called New Liberty, it took the name Mount Vernon Baptist Church in 1870. Its early roll included the Rev. Joshua F. Johnson, who would sit as a delegate at the 1861 Secession Convention in Austin.
Franklin County Courthouse
Mt. Vernon, TX
Mt. Vernon was platted in 1849 and chosen county seat when Franklin County was created in 1875, progressing from a wooden courthouse to a brick one by 1878. A fight over financing a new courthouse without a public vote climbed all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, which in 1911 upheld the county's method — and within days commissioners awarded the contract for this building, completed in 1912.
The Wright-Vaughan House
Mt. Vernon, TX
Dr. William C. Wright, a North Carolinian who came to Mt. Vernon in 1850, was the town's first physician, and around 1870 he built this house, converting his earlier home into a hospital that served the community into the mid-20th century. The family passed the home down through daughters and granddaughters before it was purchased and restored in the 1970s. It preserves the memory of frontier medicine in a small East Texas town.