Franklin Township, Morrow County

How Franklin Township, Morrow County began

Franklin Township was organized in 1823 out of Knox County territory and named for Benjamin Franklin, one of twenty-one townships across Ohio to carry his name. It lies in the eastern part of Morrow County and has no incorporated village, though it contains the small community of Pulaskiville and the newer census-designated place of Hidden Lakes. The township relies on Mount Gilead's water system and shares much of its early history with the county seat. Today it has about 1,610 residents.

Incorporated organized as a township in 1823.

Where the name comes from

Named for Benjamin Franklin; one of twenty-one Franklin Townships in Ohio.

Before the town

No Native American site or event specific to Franklin Township was found in the sources searched, including a full reading of the 1911 county history's Franklin Township chapter. The township was part of Knox County before 1848, within the region the 1911 county history and Ohio History Central describe as Shawnee hunting ground and Wyandot/Delaware (Lenape) travel corridor before white settlement, and the Greenville Treaty line of 1795 runs through the township, entering the county here and forming the north boundary of Harmony Township.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware).

Timeline

1. 1810 — Samuel Shaw, born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1762 and previously settled in Pickaway County, becomes the first actual settler on congressional land in what became Franklin Township; David Peoples, from Jefferson County, Ohio, arrives shortly after, young, unmarried and too poor to afford an axe.
2. 1812 — John Cook, who had scouted the area with John Ackerman and William Levering in 1810, moves his family from Maryland to Franklin Township late in the year, delayed by War of 1812 alarms that had emptied nearby settlements toward Mount Vernon and Fredericktown; Benjamin Corwin, a tanner, also arrives and sets up the area's first and only tannery.
3. 1815 — The township's first school house, a round-log building with a huge fireplace, is built on the site of the later Owl Creek Baptist church in the township's northeast corner; it burns in 1822 from a chimney defect.
4. 1823 — Franklin Township was organized, then part of Knox County.
5. 1830 — A New School Baptist society is formed at Pulaskiville by Elders James and George, of Chester Township, who had previously preached at settlers' cabins.
6. 1834 — Pulaskiville, a crossroads hamlet, is laid out by William Linn and Richard Traux on land they owned; a one-story frame building goes up two years later.
7. 1840 — The Pulaskiville neighborhood builds a frame structure for the Baptist society's house of worship; it is replaced by a $2,200 church in 1874.
8. 1848 — The township became part of the newly organized Morrow County.

Stories

Pulaskiville, a name without a village

Franklin Township never grew an incorporated village of its own, but its small community of Pulaskiville -- probably named, like so many places across the Ohio frontier, for a Revolutionary War figure, in this case the Polish general Casimir Pulaski, though we could not confirm it -- still holds a church that has served the surrounding farms for generations. Like its neighboring townships, Franklin's residents have long depended on Mount Gilead, a few miles west, for county government, a post office, and, in recent decades, piped water from the village's well field.

John Cook's four-week journey into a county on alarm

In the fall of 1810, John Cook, John Ackerman and William Levering rode out from Maryland to scout the newly opened congressional lands, and Cook bought land next to territory he had already picked out for his father. Late in 1812 the elder Cook set out for good, family and goods packed into a Pennsylvania 'land-schooner' wagon drawn by five horses. The four-week trip grew grimmer as they went: at Cambridge they met a wounded soldier from the Copus fight near Mansfield who tried to talk them out of continuing, and at Mount Vernon they learned their future neighbors had already fled to town for fear of an Indian attack. Cook pressed on anyway, taking shelter in an empty surveyor's cabin at Middlebury until he could raise his own -- an eighteen-by-twenty-foot structure with a chimney of 'cat and clay' -- and within the year had upgraded to a two-story hewn-log house that neighbors considered 'quite an aristocratic residence for that time.'

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · morrow.ohgenweb.org · en.wikipedia.org · hmdb.org · archive.org

Groundwater wells (5 wells) The water here

• Mt Gilead Village39% of residentsGroundwater wells (5 wells)
• Del-co Water Company, Inc.37% of residentsOlentangy River, O'Shaughnessy and Alum Creek reservoirs, plus Knox County wells
• Fredericktown Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Candlewood Lake Association Inc10% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Spills reported since 2021 (9)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-01: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2018: 3 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

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