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is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland. Founded by German immigrant John Reister in 1758, it is located to the northwest of Baltimore. Though it is older than the areas surrounding it, it now serves primarily as a residential suburb of Baltimore. The center is designated the Reisterstown Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
In 1746, a church was built on a piece of land nearby Reister’s property known as Church Hill. Funded and built by the Lutheran community, the church was free to all denominations. As normal back then the church served a second purpose, a school house. But as the town and its population grew, the church could no longer hold all of the town’s children. Reister found a solution to this and made a new school on his property in 1793.
After the death of John Reister, the town raised money to build Franklin Academy, in the name of Benjamin Franklin. By 1824 the school had been finished, and in 1826 the community had installed a cupola, the Franklin Bell, which now resides proudly in front of the present Franklin High School. In the 1870s the school became one of the first to join the Baltimore County school system. Franklin Academy became the first public high school in the county in 1874. By the early 1900s the school became a public library (previously the Franklin Academy), where it still stands today next to the Lutheran cemetery and across the street from the present day Franklin Middle School.