My husband is a direct descendant Mark (Martin) Franklin & Nancy Ann Stapleton.

20+ years of sourced, documented research by a number of direct descendants has failed to identify the parentage of Mark (Martin) Franklin and that of Nancy Ann Stapleton. At this point, the Franklin line ends with Mark & Nancy. You have no idea how hard we've worked and the trips to AL courthouses we've made trying to break down the wall and take this particular branch of the Franklin name back just one more generation. It's a quest that love of my husband has sent me on & one I will continue to pursue until I have a solid answer. While I am a Franklin by marriage and not by blood, I feel a deep & abiding love for this particular couple because of the years of documented research that I've personally done on them & their children & descendants (and I have not been alone). I have been to Nancy's grave with my husband many times (we replaced her broken marker with the help of other descendants a few years ago) and I have also stood at Mark's grave with my research partner (my husband's cousin) leaving behind a beautiful bouquet of roses.

A few years ago, we first saw online where someone had arbitrarily decided Mark's parents were George Franklin & Vashti Mercer. We were initially thrilled; that is until we contacted the person in question to ask for documented sources & were informed that this person didn't have any and didn't remember where the information had come from.

If there exists documentation proving the parentage of Mark (Martin) Franklin, we would be thrilled to see it. Otherwise, continuing to name Mark (Martin) Franklin as a child of Vashti Mercer & her husband is just another pretty story and completely misleading to anyone who sees it.

Rest assured that we contiinue to work diligently on this and if we ever determine who Mark's parents were, we'll be shouting it from the rooftops as well as posting it here at Ancestry.com!