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 FRANKLIN, a city and the county-seat of Venango county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the confluence of French Creek and Allegheny river, about 55 m. S. by E. of Erie, in the N.W. part of the state. Pop. (1890) 6221; (1900) 7317 (489 being foreign-born); (1910) 9767. Franklin is served by the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, and the Franklin & Clearfield railways. Its streets are broad and well paved and shaded, and there are two public parks, a public library and many handsome residences. Franklin is the centre of the chief oil region of the state, and from it great quantities of refined oil are shipped. Natural gas also abounds. The city’s manufacture include oil-well supplies, boilers, engines, steel castings, iron goods, lumber, bricks, asbestos goods, manifolding paper and flour. On the site of the present city the French built in 1754 a fortification, Fort Machault, which after the capture of Fort Duquesne by the English was a rallying place for Indians allied with the French. In 1759 the French abandoned and completely destroyed the fort; and in the following year the English built in the vicinity Fort Venango, which was captured by the Indians in 1763 during the Conspiracy of Pontiac, the whole garrison being massacred. In 1787 the United States built Fort Franklin (about 1 m. above the mouth of French Creek) as a protection against the Indians; in 1796 the troops were removed to a strongly built and well-fortified wooden building, known as “Old Garrison,” at the mouth of French Creek, and in 1803 they were permanently withdrawn from the neighbourhood. Franklin was laid out as a town in 1795, was incorporated as a borough in 1828, and was chartered as a city in 1868. Most of its growth dates from the discovery of oil in 1860.

FRANKLIN, a town and the county-seat of Williamson county, Tennessee, U.S.A., in the central part of the state, on the Harpeth river, and about 20 m. S.W. of Nashville. Pop. (1900) 2180; (1910) 2924. Franklin is served by the Louisville & Nashville railway. It is the seat of the Tennessee Female College and the Battle Ground Academy, and its chief objects of interest are the battle-ground, the Confederate cemetery and the Confederate monument. During the Civil War Franklin was the scene of a minor engagement on the 10th of April 1863, and of a battle, celebrated as one of the most desperately fought of the war, which took place on the 30th of November 1864. The Union general Schofield, who was slowly withdrawing to Nashville before the advance of General J. B. Hood’s army, which he was ordered to hold in check in order to give Thomas time to prepare for battle (see, § 32), was unable immediately to cross the Harpeth river and was compelled to entrench his forces south of the town until his wagon trains and artillery could be sent over the stream by means of two small bridges. In the afternoon Schofield’s outposts and advanced lines were attacked by the Confederates in full strength, and instead of withdrawing as ordered they made a determined stand. Thus the assailants, carrying the advanced works by storm, rushed upon the main defences on the heels of the broken advanced guard, and a general engagement was brought on which lasted from 3.30 until nine o’clock in the evening. Against, it is said, thirteen separate assaults, all delivered with exceptional fury, Schofield managed to hold his position, and shortly before midnight he withdrew across the river in good order. The engagement was indecisive in its results, but the Union commander’s purpose, to hold Hood momentarily in check, was gained, and Hood’s effort to crush Schofield was unavailing. The losses were very heavy; Hood’s effective forces in the engagement numbered about 27,000, Schofield’s about 28,000; the Confederate losses (excluding cavalry) were about 6500, excluding the slightly wounded; six general officers were killed (including Major-General P. R. Cleburne, a brave Irishman who had been a corporal in the British army), six wounded, and one captured; the Union losses (excluding cavalry) were 2326. In two of the Confederate brigades all the general and field officers were killed or wounded.

See J. D. Cox, The Battle of Franklin (New York, 1897).

FRANKLIN, a word derived from the Late Lat. francus, free, and meaning primarily a freeman. Subsequently it was used in England to denote a land-holder who was of free but not of noble birth. Some of the older English writers occasionally use it to mean a liberal host. The Latin form of the word is franchilanus.

FRANKLINITE, a member of the spinel group of minerals, consisting of oxides of iron, manganese and zinc in varying proportions, (Fe, Zn, Mn)″(Fe, Mn)‴O4. It occurs as large octahedral crystals often with rounded edges, and as granular masses. The colour is iron-black and the lustre metallic; hardness 6, specific gravity 5.2. It thus resembles magnetite in external characters, but is readily distinguished from this by the fact that it is only slightly magnetic. It is found in considerable amount, associated with zinc minerals (zincite and willemite) in crystalline limestone, at Franklin Furnace, New Jersey, where it is mined as an ore of zinc (containing 5 to 20% of the metal); after the extraction of the zinc, the residue is used in the manufacture of spiegeleisen (the mineral containing 15 to 20% of manganese oxides). Associated with franklinite at Franklin Furnace, and found also at some other localities, is another member of the spinel group, namely, gahnite or zinc-spinel, which is a zinc aluminate, ZnAl2O4, with a little of the zinc replaced by iron and manganese.

FRANK-MARRIAGE (liberum maritagium), in real property law, a species of estate tail, now obsolete. When a man was seized of land in fee simple, and gave it to a daughter on marriage, the daughter and her husband were termed the donees in frank-marriage, because they held the land granted to them and the heirs of their two bodies free from all manner of service, except fealty, to the donor or his heirs until the fourth degree of consanguinity from the donor was passed. This right of a freeholder so to give away his land at will was first recognized in the reign of Henry II., and became up to the reign of Elizabeth the most usual kind of settlement.

FRANKPLEDGE (Lat. francum plegium), an early English institution, consisting (as defined by Stubbs) of an association for mutual security whose members, according to Hallam, “were perpetual bail for each other.” The custom whereby the inhabitants of a district were responsible for any crime or injury committed by one of their number is old and widespread; it prevailed in England before the Norman Conquest, and is an outcome of the earlier principle whereby this responsibility rested on kinship. Thus a law of Edgar (d. 975) says “and let every man so order that he have a borh (or surety), and let the borh then bring and hold him to every justice; and if any one then do wrong and run away, let the borh bear that which he ought to bear”; and a law of Canute about 1030 says “and that every one be brought into a hundred and in borh, and let the borh hold and lead him to every plea.” About this time these societies, each having its headman, were called frithborhs, or peace-borhs, and the Normans translated the Anglo-Saxon word by frankpledge. But the history of the frankpledge proper begins not earlier than the time of the Norman Conquest. The laws, which although called the laws of Edward the Confessor were not drawn up until about 1130, contain a clause about frithborhs which decrees that in every place societies of ten men shall be formed for mutual security and reparation. And before this date William the Conqueror had ordered that “every one who wishes to be regarded as free must be in a pledge, and that the pledge must hold and bring him to justice if he commits any offence”; and the laws of Henry I. ordered every person of substance over twelve years of age to be enrolled in a frankpledge. This association of ten, or as it often was at a later date of twelve men, was also called a tithing, or decima, and in the north of England was known as tenmanne tale.

The view of frankpledge (visus franciplegii), or the duty of ascertaining that the law with regard to frankpledges was complied with, was in the hands of the sheriffs, who held an itinerant court called the “sheriff’s tourn” for this and other purposes. This court was held twice a year, but in 1217 it was ordered that the view of frankpledge should only be taken once—at Michaelmas. Introduced at or before the time of Henry I., the view was regulated by the Assize of Clarendon of 1166 and