Cornell Franklin

Cornell Sidney Franklin (1892–1959) was an American lawyer, judge and politician who served as the chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council from 1937 to 1940.

Early life

Franklin was born April 1, 1892, in Columbus, Mississippi, United States. He was the son of Cornell Samuel and Mary Wycoff (Taylor) Franklin. He was educated at the Franklin Academy from which he graduated in 1909 and the University of Mississippi where he obtained a BA in 1913 and an LLB in 1914.

Legal practice in Hawaii

Franklin practiced law in Hawaii from 1914 to 1917. He then served as an assistant Attorney General of Hawaii from 1917 to 1918. In 1919, he was appointed First Judge of the First Judicial Circuit of Hawaii and served in that position until 1921 when he moved to Shanghai.

In 1933, Franklin was elected a member of Shanghai Municipal Council. In 1937 he was elected Chairman of the Council and served in that position for three years.

After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the Shanghai International Settlement was encircled by Japanese troops. Franklin along with the Secretary General of the Council, Stirling Fessenden were involved with a number of negotiations with the Japanese to maintain the independence of the International Settlement. He returned to America on board the MS Gripsholm with other Americans after transferring in a Goa, India, then a Portuguese colony and a neutral port.

He returned to Shanghai after the war and resumed practice as a lawyer in partnership with Robert T Bryant, the former Shanghai Municipal Advocate. By this time extraterritoriality had come to an end and the United States Court for China no longer existed. Franklin stayed on after the Chinese Communist Revolution and was granted an exit visa in 1951. (Bryan was imprisoned for 18 months as a spy before being released via Hong Kong in 1952)

Marriages and children

Franklin married Estelle Oldham in April, 1918, and they had two children, Victoria and Malcom. Estelle left Shanghai in 1926 and divorced Franklin. She remarried in 1929 to the American writer, and later Nobel Prize winner, William Faulkner. Faulkner had courted Estelle before she married Franklin.

Franklin remarried in 1929 to Dallas Chesterman Lee in Shanghai with whom he had two sons, Cornell Swinton who was born on 16 March 1931 and died as an infant on 31 March 1931 and Cornell Jr. "Corney" Franklin born on 3 October 1933 at 200 Jordan Avenue Shanghai.

Notably, Victoria received a present from William Faulkner, The Wishing Tree, his only book written for children.

Military service

Franklin was a First Lieutenant of the US Army Infantry from 1918 to 1919 during World War I in Hawaii. He was one of the three organisers of the American Troop of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps and served as a First Lieutenant of the Corps. He was buried in the Friendship Cemetery in Columbus, Mississippi.