Franklin County history

Chambersburg was made into a borough and county seat in 1803.

The town was incorporated as a borough on March 24, 1805 by an act of the Pennsylvania Assembly.

Carnesville was proclaimed as the permanent seat for Franklin County on November 29, 1806.

In 1825, the German Reformed Church established a seminary was established in Carlisle.

When the borough was officially incorporated in 1831, the name was changed to Waynesboro.

The seminary would relocate to Mercersburg in 1837.

In 1841, the Franklin RR Co. would open a line that connected Chambersburg with Hagerstown.

In 1853 Marshall College moved to Lancaster, Pa., and merged with Franklin College to form Franklin & Marshall College.

The eminent black educator, Booker T. Washington, was born April 5, 1856, on Burrough's Plantation, approximately 16 miles northeast of Rocky Mount.

In August of 1859, Frederick Douglass would travel to Chambersburg to meet with Brown to receive support for his upcoming raid and to discuss plans.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Franklin County immediately responded by recruiting hundreds of soldiers to fight in long struggle.

Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart led a raid in October 1862 in Franklin County to destroy the railroad bridge in Scotland, seize supplies, and cutting telegraph lines.

In June 1863, Corporal William Rihl became the first Union soldier killed on Pennsylvania soil and north of the Mason-Dixon line.

On July 28, 1864, General Jubal Early issued orders to General John McCausland to ransom Chambersburg for $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in Yankee currency as retaliation for Northern devastation of the Shenandoah Valley.

The college was named after Miss Sarah Wilson (1795-1871), a resident of nearby St Thomas, who provided sizable donations for the establishment of the new institution.

On February 17, 1873, as a result of growth and change, the village of Rocky Mount became an incorporated town with established boundaries.

The City of Lavonia began in 1878 with the coming of the Elberton-Air-Line Railroad.

Born a slave on a plantation near Hales Ford, Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881.

In 1882, the company began concentrating on manufacturing refrigerating equipment.

By 1890 Franklin Springs’ resort had two hotels, a skating rink, two pavilions, and about 15 private residences on about 87 acres.

In 1893, the name was finally changed to Mercersburg Academy, and it serves as a private, independent, coed college preparatory boarding school.

In 1901, White Pine Camp was founded under the leadership of Doctor Joseph T. Rothrock, a physician and an avid environmentalist.

In 1903, Doctor Joseph T. Rothrock founded the Pennsylvania State Forest Academy in Mont Alto becoming one of the first public forestry schools in the country.

In 1906 the Penn Hall Junior and Preparatory College was established in Chambersburg.

By 1907, the sanatorium was transferred to the Pennsylvania Department of Health and renamed the Mont Alto Sanatorium.

The Museum was originally built in 1911, one of about 2,500 of Andrew Carnegie’s library construction projects worldwide.

The construction of the Lincoln Highway (Route 30) began in 1913, becoming the first coast-to-coast highway in America, connecting New York City to San Francisco.

Starting with the Treaty of Beaufort in 1787 that allowed the secession of the northern section of Franklin County to South Carolina, and ending on November 3, 1914, with the formation of Barrow County, Franklin has been pruned, plucked, and picked into the home you know and love.

On March 1, 1918, the property was sold to the Pentecostal Holiness Church.

The former resort with natural springs became the home of Franklin Springs Institute on January 1, 1919.

By 1921, Penn Hall finally had a permanent home on Philadelphia Avenue, on the current site of the Menno Haven Penn Hall Campus.

To that end, Penn Hall also began operating a Junior College in 1927.

In 1937, a team of volunteers, state and federal agency partners, local Trail-maintaining clubs, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy completed the Appalachian Trail.

In 1941, the War Department chose Letterkenny Township as a site for one of twelve new army depots.

Grove Manufcaturing was founded by brothers, Dwight and John Grove and Wayne Nicarry, and began operations in a small rented two-car garage in Shady Grove, PA producing rubber tire farm wagons; however, by 1949, they had begun to produce cranes to assist in their manufacturing process.

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which created and funded the construction of the Interstate Highway System.

A defensive specialist, Fox was awarded the first American League Gold Glove for a Second Basemen in 1957, and won the award two more times.

In 1959, he won the American League MVP, leading the White Sox to the American League pennant and the World Series before losing to the Dodgers.

In 1963, Penn State Mont Alto officially became a Commonwealth Campus, offering the first one or two years of most majors.

After the sale of the company in 1967, John L. Grove left the company and would go on to start Condor Industries, which later became JLG Industries.

Because of strong student interests and a local workforce requiring more students trained in vocational education, a major expansion was completed in 1976.

The train depot was acquired by Lavonia’s Chamber of Commerce in 1979.

In September of 1983, the Department of Natural Resources announced that Lavonia had become the 1,000th listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997.