From Bent Twigs in Jefferson County, by the inestimable late County Historian, Jean Patterson Bible. Transcribed by the incomparable Doris Kinser Fountain.
Tennessee's First Millionaire
(pp. 182)
One of the best-known entrepreneurs in Jefferson County, East Tennessee, and probably in the state in the nineteenth century was Lawson D. Franklin, said to have been Tennessee's first recorded millionaire.
He was born in Rutledge, Virginia, January 19, 1801, and died in Leadvale, Tennessee, April 8, 1861. At an early age, he left Virginia and came to the area around Leadvale, immediately entering into the business world. Not long afterward, his parents, Owen and Betsey Roper Franklin, followed him to Tennessee where Betsey's brother, Col. John Roper, lived in Dandridge, and was already associated with young Lawson in business deals. Family letters passing between Roper and Lawson concerning the cotton business and slave trade in Mississippi, seem to indicate that Col. Roper had an early hand in the young man's financial success.
A large portion of the land eventually owned by Lawson lay along the French Broad River, now Douglas Lake, between Newport and Morristown, one tract being some twenty miles in length from Cocke County, through Jefferson County and into Hamblen County. The geographical center of the tract was located in Leadvale, and eventually extended to other sections of Tennessee and Kentucky, also to Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. (Howard Hill, The Herbert Walters Story, Book I, pp 10-11.)
Lawson Franklin was an entrepreneur in every sense of the word, with an astute business sense, a certain toughness, and a Midas touch that seemed to turn everything he entered into a financial success. He would accumulate hogs, cattle, other livestock and slaves, purchasing great numbers of livestock in Tennessee and Kentucky, and having them driven by the slaves on foot to South Carolina for disposal. Rather than take a loss if the market was bad, he would buy a cotton plantation in South Carolina, have it worked by the slaves he brought with him, fatten the hogs, and wait patiently until the market improved. He would then sell everything outright, including the plantation, and return to Tennessee to repeat the shrewd business venture.
He operated two merchandising stores in and near Leadvale, for which all the supplies were purchased in Baltimore and brought from there by wagon.
At one time he extended the railroad from Morristown to Leadvale to facilitate and stimulate his mining interests in Leadvale. (It is sometimes suggested that the latter may have been the origin of the name of the community, but apparently the name was already there.) He eventually sold out his railroad interest to the railroad company, which in time extended it to Paint Rock, North Carolina. It is now a part of the Southern Railway System. An interest in banking led to his establishment of a bank in Rogersville, Tennessee, which he operated with his usual finesse and good judgment.
In the meantime another concern was the building of three houses, the first being the original mansion for his family, on a high hill off the Leadvale-White Pine road. The imposing structure is described in detail in Howard Hill's The Herbert Walters Story:
The Original Lawson D. Franklin Mansion
The imposing Early American mansion which Lawson D. Franklin built for himself and his wife, Elizabeth R. Franklin, still stands near Leadvale, facing what was once the beautiful French Broad River, now an arm of the Douglas Lake. It is located a few hundred feet east of U.S. Highway 25, approximately a mile south of White Pine, Tennessee, and Newport. It is presently owned by Mrs. Betty Sisk Kesterson and is surrounded by about a hundred acres -- all that remains of the original thousands.
In attempting to establish the date of the erection of the mansion, we are included to believe it was between 1835 and 1840. The reason for the selection of these dates is because at that time Lawson was between thirty-five and forty years of age, having been born in 1801. By that time, as we have indicated, he had arrived at a responsible financial situation. In no magazine in which the mansion has been pictured is the actual date of its erection indicated, with the exception of a magnificent publication, now out of print, by Gifford A. Cocharan, published by J. J. Augustine Publishers, New York, in 1946. Mr. Cochran suggests that the date was probably 1815. This could not have been correct due to the fact that Lawson Franklin was only fourteen years of age at that time. We wish now to express our appreciation to Mr. Cocharan for the original picture used in his publication, which shows the old mansion in its simple yet impressive dignity. A reproduction of the picture appears in the pages of this book.
The two-story mansion is built of red brick - handmade by slaves, with walls eighteen inches thick, and contains some fourteen rooms, each with fifteen-foot ceilings. Ten of these rooms measure 20 by 30 feet, and two of them 30 by 30 feet, these . . . [next pages missing].
(p. 183 has illustration with following caption, "The original mansion of Lawson D. Franklin (1801-1861), built around 1830 at Leadvale, Tennessee. He was the great-grandfather of Herbert S. Walters.)
