Franklin was an early place of European-American settlement and developing cotton plantations from the 1830s, when most of the Choctaw people were removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

The American migrants were mostly from planter families in South Carolina and Virginia, and brought numerous slaves with them.

[2] Erected in 1841 from labor by enslaved African Americans, the church had two front entrances, one for men and one for women.

[3] On January 2, 1865, during the Civil War, this was a battlefield in an engagement involving 3,300 Federal mounted troops and 1,100 Confederate Home Guards led by General William Wirt Adams.

[3][4] The Franklin Presbyterian Church is still in use; its congregation has decided to keep the cannonball holes from the Civil War left visible as a reminder of its history.