On this episode of Our American Stories, in the turbulent years after the Revolution, settlers west of the mountains felt the weight of distance from the governments that claimed them. Their answer was to imagine a new state named Franklin, a place shaped not by polished politics but by the realities of frontier life. The Appalachian Storyteller traces how this fragile experiment rose and unraveled, revealing a moment when the boundaries of early America were still unsettled and ordinary people tried to shape a future that never quite arrived.

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