Franklin, West Virginia: Where Three Counties Became One

Franklin is the county seat of Pendleton County, West Virginia, tucked into the valley where the South Branch of the Potomac bends through the Allegheny highlands. The town began in seventeen eighty-eight, when the Virginia General Assembly carved Pendleton County out of three existing counties and needed a place to hold court. The selected site belonged to a settler named Francis Evick, who divided forty-six and a half surrounding acres into lots and gave the crossing point the name Frankford, meaning Frank's ford.

The Virginia legislature formally established the town in December of seventeen ninety-four and renamed it Franklin, likely in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Pendleton County itself was named for Edmund Pendleton, the distinguished Virginia statesman and judge.

Franklin overlooks the river at an elevation where the surrounding ridges of the Allegheny Mountain system converge on all sides. With a population of just over seven hundred, it remains one of the smallest county seats in West Virginia, serving a county that is among the most rural in the eastern United States. The surrounding mountain terrain kept it isolated for generations, preserving a community character that has changed slowly.