Franklin: Schenck's Bet on the Great Miami

In seventeen ninety-six, a professional surveyor from New Jersey named General William Schenck staked out a settlement on the Great Miami River in what was then the Northwest Territory, and named it after Benjamin Franklin. He was betting on the river: the Great Miami could power mills, move goods, and attract settlers pushing in from the east. The city lies about fifteen miles southwest of Dayton and thirty-three miles northeast of Cincinnati.

The bet paid off in stages. Franklin became home to one of the first four post offices in Warren County when Ohio was barely a state. The Miami Canal arrived in eighteen twenty-eight, cutting the freight cost to Cincinnati dramatically and turning Franklin into a real commercial hub. Lumber mills, flour mills, and paper mills worked the river. The village incorporated in eighteen fourteen, became a city in time, and today calls itself the City of Murals for the painted historical scenes covering its downtown walls. It is one of the older continuously settled towns in the Miami Valley, carrying the name of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was recognized as a city in nineteen fifty-one and counted eleven thousand six hundred ninety residents in the twenty twenty census. Notable people from Franklin include Samuel Bigger, a governor of Indiana, William A. Newell, a governor of New Jersey, and Bergen Evans, the lexicographer and television host.