1. 

   First generation of the Franklin Barretts: Mary Rebecca Murfee Barrett (1822 - 1897), wife of Richard Barrett (1813 - 1868). The mother of eight children, Mary Rebecca managed the Barrett Hotel and was a ??? member of the Franklin Baptist Church.

2. 

   Richard Crawford Barrett (1849 - 1928), son of Richard and Mary Rebecca, and his wife, Mary Estelle Powell Barrett (1853 - 1923). Crawford, the first child born in Franklin, served the Confederacy and the Seaboard Line as a telegrapher and was Franklin's first recorder and treasurer. The town's first historian, he was also for many years a ????? of the Albemarle Steam Navigation Company. At the time of his death Crawford was thought to be the oldest telegrapher in Virginia.

3. 

   The Barrett family on the porch of the Bogart House, "River Lawn," ca. 1898. Mary Eliza Barrett Bogart (1850 - 1923), pictured standing on the porch (fifth from the left), was the eldest daughter of Richard and Mary Rebecca Murfee Barrett. Mary Eliza married Captain John H. Bogart, and official of the Seaboard Line and an owner of the Albemarle Steam Navigation Company, in 1868. A founder of Emmanuel Episcopal Church and a talented pianist, she held many informal dances and musical evenings in her home and made "River Lawn" a center of the social life of Franklin.

4. 

   Memorabilia of Thomas Oswald Barrett, pictured on the desk from Goodman and Barrett's ????. Note the Ivory and ebony dominoes in the center of the desk.

5. 

   Barrett's Corner Band, ca. 1890. The band was organized by Thomas Oswald Barrett (1854 - 1929), son of Richard and Mary Rebecca, a druggist and self-taught musician. Tom, who also played the violin, is pictured third from the left on the front row.

In 1847 one of Franklin's most influential couples, Richard and Mary Rebecca Murfee Barrett, married and received a 260 acre farm from Mary's father, Simon. The couple built a house near the center of the new settlement and began providing meals to the railroad's track layers. The Barretts' new business soon developed into a hotel, a popular shopover on the Norfolk to Edenton run. In 1857 Richard persuaded th railroad to relocate its depot to the west side of the river and built a larger hotel to accomodate the rapidly increasing rail and river traffic. The Barrett Hotel, located on one of the four corners created by the railroad and Main Street, was a large building with double verandas, which "ranked as high as the reputation of the hotels of Norfolk, Richmond and Baltimore." The hotel burned in 1881 but the Barretts continued to be leaders in Franklin's early commercial, social, and religious life.

"A drug store, along with its stock of potent medicines, chill tonics, porous plasters, etc., boasted a soda fountain which dispensed lemonade and a choice of lemon or vanilla soda (without ice). When trade was slow, as it was apt to be in the pleasant summer afternoons, the personnel of the establishment would put chairs and a convenient table outside the door and engage in absorbing games of checkers or dominoes, never cards. The casual passer-by paused to view the contests and suggest to the next ??? just how that last move should have been made."

Frances Lawrence Webb