75 years.
Three generations.
Same family.

Franklin Printing started the way a lot of small American businesses started — in the basement of a family farmhouse. Lucille & Everett H. Jackson, Sr. set up their first press there in 1950 and began taking on jobs one at a time.

He didn’t run it alone. His wife, Lucille Jackson, worked alongside him through the years — setting type, doing the bindery work, and keeping the books. Franklin has been a family operation from day one.

When the basement could no longer hold the work, Everett and Lucille bought a piece of land and a building on Maple Avenue, and Franklin Printing opened its first dedicated shop.

In time, the boys came in. Everett Jr. and Eldon Jackson, the founder’s sons, joined the company and made it a second-generation business. Both still work at Franklin today.

Maple Avenue stayed home for a long stretch. As the work grew, so did the building — three separate additions later, the family had built out about as much as the lot could hold.

When Franklin finally outgrew Maple Avenue, the family bought land at 984 Beverly Avenue in Zanesville and built a new facility from the ground up.

The presses and the heavy equipment came down from Maple Ave., and the shop opened for business at its new address. Franklin Printing has operated out of Beverly Avenue ever since.

Through all of it, Everett Sr. kept modernizing — a new typesetting machine, a new plate maker, a new folder, a four-color press. He chased every advance that would make the work better. As his sons remember it, “If they didn’t make it, he would make the machine.”

Everett Sr. founded the company. His sons Everett Jr. and Eldon carried it through the move and the additions, and run Franklin today — Everett as president, Eldon as vice president. A third generation, Sarah Jackson, works in the shop alongside them now.

“Dad wanted to do something on his own. He got it started, slowly, and has been building all these years. He put all three of us boys through school, so now we got our children in here.”

Eldon Jackson, vice president

What we put on paper today belongs to the same line. Same family, same name, same way of doing the work — one careful job at a time.