The Town of Franklin is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Franklin is one of thirteen Massachusetts municipalities that have applied for, and been granted, city forms of government but wish to retain “The town of” in their official names. As of 2022, the city’s population was 36,745, with a growth rate of 15.38% since 2015. It is home to the country’s first public library, the Franklin Public Library with its first books donated by Benjamin Franklin in 1790. It also contains the largest Catholic parish in the Boston Archdiocese, St. Mary’s Catholic church, with some 15,000 members.

Franklin was first settled by Europeans in 1660 and officially incorporated during the American Revolution. The town was formed from the western part of the town of Wrentham, and it was officially incorporated on March 2, 1778; its designated name at incorporation was to be Exeter. However, the town’s citizens opted to call it Franklin, in honor of the statesman Benjamin Franklin, the first municipality in the U.S. to be so named.

It was hoped that Benjamin Franklin would donate a bell for a church steeple in the town, but he donated 116 books instead, including Night-Thoughts, James Janeway’s Invisible Realities, and the works of John Locke. On November 20, 1790, it was decided that the volumes would be lent to the residents of Franklin for free via its library, which has been in operation since then as the Franklin Public Library. The Ray Memorial Library building was dedicated in 1904. In 1990, on the library’s bicentennial, its staff published a booklet, “A History of America’s First Public Library at Franklin Massachusetts, 1790 ~ 1990” to commemorate America’s first public library and book collection.

The town is also home to the birthplace of America’s father of public education, Horace Mann. The town is also home to what may have been the nation’s oldest continuously operational one-room school house (Croydon, New Hampshire’s school dates to 1780, but there is debate as to whether it is truly “one room”). The Red Brick School was started in 1792, its building constructed in 1833, and was operational until 2008. St. Mary’s Catholic Church, located in central Franklin and built by Matthew Sullivan, is the largest Catholic parish in the Boston Archdiocese with some 15,000 members.

Franklin is located at 42°5′N 71°24′W / 42.083°N 71.400°W / 42.083; -71.400 (42.0891, –71.4069). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 27.0 square miles (70 km²), of which 26.7 square miles (69 km) is land and 0.3 square miles (0.78 km²) is water.

Much of the Town of Franklin lies within the Charles River watershed. Principal streams include Mine, Shepard’s, Miller, Uncas, Dix and Miscoe Brooks. Much of the marshland along Mine Brook has been permanently protected by the Natural Valley Storage Project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The extreme southwest corner of Franklin is part of the Blackstone River watershed. The town has an impounded series of lakes known as the Franklin Reservoir, which is not used as a public drinking water supply. The lakes are now protected open space.

Ernest DelCarte (1911-2000) bequeathed the land that would become the conservation area to the Town of Franklin. The DelCarte family assisted in the transfer to Franklin in return for the town’s commitment to preserve the land as open space. Worth an estimated $3 million at the time of the transfer of title, the Recreation and Conservation Area received a multi-million-dollar upgrade in 2014. Significant public forests and parks include the Franklin State and the Franklin Town Forests.