Franklin Thomas Backus

Franklin Thomas Backus (6 May 1813 – 14 May 1870) was an American lawyer and politician. He was a defense attorney in the Oberlin–Wellington Rescue case and the Case Western Reserve University School of Law was once named for him.

Backus was born in Lee, Mass., 6 May 1813. He was the fourth son of Thomas and Rebecca Backus. While he was very young the family moved to Lansing, New York He prepared himself for college while assistant teacher in an academy in Delaware kept by an older brother, and entered Yale College as a Junior in 1834. On leaving college in 1836, he established a classical school in Cleveland, Ohio, and at the same time began the study of law. In 1839 he was admitted to the bar. In January 1842, he married Miss Lucy Mygatt, who survived him. In 1846 he was member of the Ohio House of Representatives, and in 1848 of the Ohio State Senate. In 1861 he was a member of the Peace Convention which met in Washington, with the hope of averting the American Civil War. The later years of his life were devoted to the duties of his profession, in which he had become eminent. His services were especially sought for by railroad corporations, and it is to the excessive and exhausting labor thus brought upon him that his death, from a disease of the heart, is to be attributed. He died in Cleveland, 14 May 1870.