Franklin School, originally built on this lot, was operating as early as the 1890s with grades 1 through 11 and by the mid-1930s had been reduced to grades 1 through 6. It had northern and southern classrooms joined by a common auditorium, first used a spring near the building for water, later drew water from a hand-pumped well in the front yard, and was heated by a wood-burning potbelly stove for which each student brought a stick of wood each morning. The school closed in 1942, and its 75-80 students transferred to Tuskegee schools. Afterward, the northern classroom was moved to its current location and converted into a community center while the rest was torn down; during its time as a community center, Hank Williams Sr. often performed for dances. After Franklin incorporated in 1977, the town began using the building as Town Hall. A mile north of Town Hall stood the remnants of what is rumored to be the first school in Macon County, the Harris Barrett School at the corner of Co. Rd. 27 and 36, built in 1903 with handmade bricks made by Tuskegee Normal School students under Booker T. Washington and later restored as a historic museum. For many years it served as an education center for descendants of enslaved people, and together Harris Barrett and Tuskegee Institute played a major role in education in the Franklin community. An experimental farm stood on the west side of Baldwin Farm Road, where Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver were active in farming in Franklin and assisted both black and white farmers. Many Franklin farms had been cleared by the Creek Indians, and Osceola, a noted leader, was born on Red Creek 10 miles from the Tallapoosa River. Franklin has also been home to many churches for more than 200 years, including a Methodist Missionary Church for the Creek Indians in the late 1700s and early 1800s with separate white and Indian cemeteries, where James McQueen, Osceola's great-grandfather, is buried in the Indian cemetery.