The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-12
CELEBRATION IN CAPITAL
 OF STATE OF FRANKLAND

Few students of American history have ever heard of the State of Frankland, yet such commonw ealth once existed, and its capital city Jonesboro. Tenn. will today commence a six-day celebration that will serve to revive interest in its vanished glory. The little city. the oldest set tlement in Tennessee, has invited all former residents and their descendants of Upper East Tennessee to return and drink of the waters of the famed ''old mill spring which still bubbles mer- rily in the heart of the town. From early this morning until Saturday night. typical Tennessee hospitality will be on tap, and the visitor will be acquainted with all the glorious his- tory of the one-time capital He will be told how the people of Tennessee, then part of North Carolina, re- nounced allegiance to that common at Jonesboro and formed a constitu- ton for the State of Frankland. John Sevier was president of the assem- blaze and later was chosen Governor of the new State. The guest of Jones' boro will be shown the old John Sevier homestead on the Nelachuckey River, and countless tales will be told of this greatest of Indian fighters The savage Cherokees, Creeks and Choc- taws-most ferocious of redskins constantly menaced the people of Frankland, and Sevier usually led the palefaceS against their enemies. When the State of Frankiand was formed, Sevier was charged with high treason and outlawry by the officials of North Carolina. His trial at Morganton at tracted national attention, and Sevier would probably have been convicted and executed but for the intervention of his two sons, James and John Sevier. Maj. Evans and Col James Cosby. The rescuers, leading a horse that was the swiftest in the terri- tory, rode into Morganton, concealed their horses, and proceeded to the court house. Cosby addressed the judge in an insulting manner. and in the excitement that followed Gen. Sevier, as was intended, managed to "Sevier's escape" is Tennessee classic.
 The State of Frankland continued to hold sway until 1787, when the gov- ernment reverted to North Carolina. In 1790 Tennessee and Kentucky be- came the Territory South of the Ohio. Tennessee was made a. separ- ate Territory in 1794, and two years later entered the Union as a State Jones boro, after its brief supremacy, lapsed into a somnolent condition, and remains much as it was a century ago -d QuleI country village, Ieft Tar De- hind in the race by Memphis and Nashville and Knoxville and Chattan- oega, cities which had no existence when. Jonesboro was a capital and a metropolis.
 The whirring reapers and mowers that are now devastating the fields of the West were born in the brain of Ephraim Ball, an American inventor whose centennial will be celebrated today. Ball was born in Greentown O., August 12, 1872, and was brought up in the carpenters trade. In 1S40 he established a foundry for making blow castings, and his inventive gen jus soon found expression in an inn proved blow, the Ohio mower, the World mower and reaper, the Buck eye machine and the New American harvester. For many years before his death forty years ago he had an ex- teusive agricultural machinery factory at Canton, O. Farmers the world over-and stockholders of the thar vester trust owe debt of gratitude to Ephraim Ball, and his centennial should not pass unnoticed.