It seems to be a recognized fact that many people, and the younger generation especially, are more familiar with the geography of South America, or the far off shores of India, than they are with their own country or even their own state. In fact there are some persons who know more about the exact location of the North Pole than they do about the location of some of the important places in their own county of Lycoming.

If one will take the map of Lycoming County and follow a straight east and west line from Williamsport to the extreme eastern end of the county, a distance of about twenty miles, he will find himself in the neighborhood of Lairdsville, in Franklin Township, but if he should attempt to drive it he would find himself interrupted by several intervening hills and mountains.

Franklin Township is situated in the lower end of the county and it and Jordan, its immediate neighbor, are the only two in the county which extend through from one county on the north to another county on the south. Franklin Township was detached from Moreland in 1822 and for thirty-two years included all the territory now within the limits of the township of Jordan and for six years a portion of what is now Penn. As its name indicates it was named for Benjamin Franklin. It is the sixteenth in size in the county and contains 16,320 acres.

The character of the country comprising this township is very much the same as that of its progenitor, Moreland, being composed of a series of wave-like hills, some of the sides of which are almost too step to be cultivatible. It forms a part of the great watershed between Lycoming and Sullivan and Columbia counties. It is drained by the Little Muncy Creek and its tributaries, namely, Big Run, Beaver Run, Indian Camp Run, and Beach Bottom Run. It is bounded on the north by Sullivan County, on the east by Jordan Township, on the south by Columbia County and on the west by Penn and Moreland Townships.

It was settled at a very early day and some of the early pioneers came to be quite celebrated. Among these was Enos Hawley. He established a tannery at Lairdsville in connection with Thomas Downing about the year 1882. Simon Hawley, a resident of Chester County, was also a member of this firm. Enos Hawley was one of the original abolitionists in this section of the country and belonged to the "Pathfinders," who voted for Fremont in 1856. He was also a prominent member of the association known as "The Underground Railroad," whose purpose it was to aid fugitive slaves to escape from the south into Canada. The route through Lycoming County was a favorite one and many of the prominent citizens of the early days were secret members of the organization.

The late Robert Hawley, at one time postmaster of Williamsport, was a son of Enos Hawley and was born in Muncy, to which place his father removed in 1861 and was appointed postmaster in the same year. Robert Hawley was a well known member of the bar of Lycoming County and a poet and literary genius of no mean order. It is to be regretted that his poems were never collected and published, as they would rank with the best productions of those whose names have become famed. One of his poems entitled, "The Boys in Blue Are Coming," first appeared in 1866 as a campaign song and was published and re-published all over the United States for a great number of years without any credit being given to the author. Indeed, at one time the poem was actually sold to a Republican club in New York for fifty dollars by a man who falsely claimed to be its author.

Lairdsville is the only village in Franklin Township and the only postoffice. It is located on Little Muncy Creek on an alluvial flat and is in the center of a very prosperous community. It was settled at an early day by Germans who had come from the original counties of the state to find a home among the hills in the lower end of Lycoming County.

Like many other sections of Lycoming County Franklin Township at an early day was an important lumbering center and much valuable timber was cut from the surrounding hills. But these days have passed and now the whole community is devoted to the farming industry, in which they have achieved a success which would hardly have been thought possible considering the hilly character of the land. The original settlers of the township were either Baptists or Lutherans and there are now but two churches in the township, both situated in Lairdsville, one of the Lutheran denomination and the other the Baptist.

At one time there was another postoffice in the township which was given the name of Mengwe, this being the designation by which the Delaware Indians called the Iroquois or Five Nations. It was located near the northern end of the township at the base of the North Mountain, but was abandoned as a postoffice many years ago.

Franklin Township, although comparatively small in area, is well supplied with schools, there being seven within its borders, namely, two at Lairdsville, and one each, known as Germany, Fairview, Chestnut Grove and Pleasant Valley. Franklin Township is away off the line of the railroads and is not easily accessible except by wagon or automobile, but whenever reached it is well worth staying in for a short time. Lairdsville is one of those quiet, peaceful, contented places that reminds one of many of the old fashioned villages described so vividly by Dickens, Lowell and other writers of the olden time.

In 1920 it had a population of 817.