Francis Bates Pond

Who was Francis Bates Pond?

Francis Bates Pond was a Republican politician from the state of Ohio. He was Ohio Attorney General from 1870 to 1874.

Pond was born August 9, 1825 at Ellisburg, Jefferson County, New York. He entered Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in 1841, and graduated with honors in 1846. He spent the next three years in Kent, Ohio, one year as a teacher and two as a book-keeper for Charles and Marvin Kent. In 1850 he went to Harmar, Ohio and taught classics at the Harmar Academy. He began study of law in 1849 in Cleveland, and continued in Marietta in 1850. He was admitted to the bar 1852 at Malta, Ohio, and three years later elected Prosecuting Attorney of Morgan County, Ohio. During the Civil War, he served as a Colonel with the Sixty-second Ohio Infantry, and August, 1864, at the Battle of Deep River, he was wounded, and lost sight in his left eye. He resigned in November of that year.

In 1867, he was elected to represent Morgan County in the Ohio House of Representatives for the Fifty-eighth General Assembly. In 1869 and 1871 he won election as Ohio Attorney General. In 1879 he was elected to the Ohio Senate from the Fourteenth district,for the Sixty-fourth General Assembly, and re-elected to the Sixty-fifth in 1881.