Franklin, Connecticut

A farm town in the hills west of Norwich, made in 1786 from the old West Farms and Pautipaug parishes, whose church began in a barn and kept one pastor, Samuel Nott, for more than seventy years.

New London County · Record checked October 8, 2026

1,863Population2020 census¹

1786Became a townWest Farms and Pautipaug joined as Franklin¹

70 yearsOne pastorRev. Samuel Nott, 1782 to 1852²

40+College mensons of Franklin graduated by 1884²

1National Registerplace, still standing³

Franklin on the map

Click the map to look closer.

2026

Franklin today

By KNOWOL

Shaded hills from Pautipaug Hill and Ayers Gap in the north down to Smith Corner, the town's roads printed by name, and a guide of 14 numbered landmarks with the National Register site marked.⁴

See the 2026 print More about this map

The story of Franklin

A church that began in a barn

The people of West Farms, the western farms of old Norwich, asked for a church of their own in 1710 and were turned down. Six years later they won it. Through the winter of 1716 they met in private houses, and the next summer they worshiped in a barn. They bought the pulpit and seats of an old ruined meetinghouse nearby for five pounds ten shillings, and voted to build a new one, forty feet by thirty-five, at Arnold's barn. The last word on the spot went to the carpenter: where the timber lay, or down at the walnut bush where the path came up the hill. The church started with eight members, all men. A great revival in 1741 and 1742 added a hundred more.¹⁵

Seventy years in one pulpit

Samuel Nott came to preach in Franklin in 1781, a young Yale graduate so frail that nobody expected a long career. He stayed more than seventy years. The church had 72 members when he came, and he took in 427 more. His younger brother Eliphalet, later president of Union College, studied with him as a boy and found him so stern that he started to run away to sea, then stayed and taught in the Franklin schools. Nott's daughters opened a school for young ladies in the parsonage. By the 1880s more than forty sons of this small farm town had graduated from college. Nott died in 1852, at 98, from the effects of a burn.⁶⁷⁸²⁹

Samuel Ladd's long roads

Samuel J. P. Ladd, born in Franklin in 1822, lost his father at thirteen and took on the family farm. At twenty-two he went to Ashtabula County, Ohio, bought 355 head of cattle and drove them home to Franklin, forty-eight days on the road. In 1846 he hauled all the granite for the Nathan Hale monument from Norwich to Coventry with an ox team, twenty-two miles each way. When Governor Sprague of Providence wanted mill land on the Shetucket River, then the east edge of Franklin, Ladd bought it from all twenty-seven owners at a set price, and the village of Baltic grew there. In 1861 he went to the legislature for Franklin. That session made the new town of Sprague, and he came home a citizen of Sprague.¹⁰¹¹¹²¹

Through the years

21 moments from 1663 to today.

1663Europeans first settle here, in the western farms of the town of Norwich.¹
1687Land grants are recorded at a place called Lebanon, in what is now Franklin; locals speak of Little Lebanon and Lebanon Hill.¹³
1710The people of West Farms ask for a church society of their own and are turned down.¹
1716West Farms becomes the second church society of Norwich.¹
1717After a winter of meeting in private houses, the people worship in a barn.⁵
1742A great revival, begun the year before, adds 100 members to the church.⁵
1749Rev. Henry Willes retires after years of strife between the Old and New Lights.¹
1755Uriah Tracy, later a United States senator, is born in Franklin.²
1758The eastern part of the parish becomes the Pautipaug society of Norwich.¹
1782Rev. Samuel Nott is settled as minister. He will serve more than seventy years.²
1786West Farms and Pautipaug are incorporated together as the town of Franklin, named for Benjamin Franklin.¹
1800A turnpike company is formed to build a road from Joshua Hyde's house in Franklin to Stafford.¹⁴
1835Dr. Ashbel Woodward's Greek Revival house goes up on what is now Route 32, about this year.¹⁵
1844Samuel J. P. Ladd drives 355 head of cattle home from Ohio, forty-eight days on the road.¹⁰
1846Ladd hauls the granite for the Nathan Hale monument from Norwich to Coventry by ox team.¹⁰
1852Samuel Nott dies at 98, still Franklin's pastor.⁹
1861Sprague is formed from parts of Franklin and Lisbon, taking the village of Baltic.¹
1868Sons and daughters come home, some from beyond the Mississippi, for the church's 150th anniversary.¹⁶
1869Dr. Ashbel Woodward publishes his history of Franklin.¹⁵
1947Woodward's descendants give his house to the town, which runs it as a museum.¹⁵
1992The Ashbel Woodward House is listed on the National Register.¹⁵

Places to see

The numbers match the landmark guide printed on the 2026 map.

2Ayers Gap PreserveNorth of town. Preserve at Ayers Gap.
5Blue Slope Country MuseumSouthwest of town. Farm museum in the southwest.Visit their website
6Franklin Congregational ChurchFranklin Center. The church of old West Farms.
7Franklin Swamp Wildlife Management AreaEast of the center. State wildlife land.
9Franklin Town HallFranklin Center. Beside the church at the center.
10Ashbel Woodward HouseRoute 32. Dr. Woodward's Greek Revival house, about 1835.
11Ashbel Woodward MuseumRoute 32. Local history exhibits and an art gallery.
12Janet Carlson Calvert LibraryNorth Franklin. The town library.Visit their website
13Franklin Volunteer Fire DepartmentNorth Franklin. All volunteer, fire and rescue.
14Mohegan Sun Country Club at Pautipaug HillPautipaug Hill. Carries the old Pautipaug name.

On the National Register

All 1 places in Franklin on the National Register of Historic Places that still stand today, oldest first, and why each one matters.³

Ashbel Woodward House

Built about 1835 · Listed 1992 · 387 Connecticut Route 32

A fine local example of a Greek Revival house in a rural setting, home of Dr. Ashbel Woodward, Franklin's doctor from 1829 to 1885 and the author of its 1869 history. His descendants gave it to the town in 1947, and it is now the Dr. Ashbel Woodward House Museum.¹⁵

In their words

“The grave of my ancestors, the home of my childhood, the abode of a virtuous and honored people”

Bela Edgerton of Hicksville, Ohio, in a toast to Franklin read at the 1868 anniversary¹⁷

“Neither Rome nor Sparta ever produced a better soldier.”

William Henry Harrison in the U.S. Senate, on Col. Jacob Kingsbury of Franklin, as quoted in the 1868 anniversary book¹⁸

“More than forty of her sons have graduated with honor at the different colleges in our country.”

The historical, statistical and industrial review of the state of Connecticut, 1884²