Chicagoan who participated in the California gold rush and was colonel of the 88th Illinois Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.

The first child of Francis Cornwall and Electa Sherman, Francis Trowbridge Sherman was born in Newtown, Conn., in 1825, and moved with his family to Chicago in 1834. Prior to the Civil War, while his father was active in Chicago politics (mayor, alderman, state representative), operated a brickyard, and built the City Hotel (later Sherman House), F.T. Sherman began work in 1844 as a post office clerk. In 1849, he journeyed overland to California (via the Platte River, Fort Bridger, and Salt Lake City) with his friend Henry A. Ballentine. Spending his first winter in Sacramento, Sherman remained for about a year before returning to Chicago via the Isthmus of Panama.

In 1851, Sherman married Eleanor "Ellen" N. Vedder and began work in manufacturing, contracting, and railroad building. During the Civil War, as colonel of the 88th Illinois Infantry, Sherman participated in the arrest of the Confederate spy Belle Boyd. He then served in the Battle of Stones River and Missionary Ridge, where he led a successful charge. Sherman was captured in 1864, exchanged, and mustered out in 1866 with the rank of brigadier general. After the war, Sherman ran a sugar plantation in Louisiana for one year and returned to Chicago, where he was postmaster, 1867-1868, and a manufacturer (Sherman, Haley & Co.) of stone and sand products, a business ruined by the fire of 1871. An attempt to start anew in New Mexico in 1876 did not succeed, and Sherman returned to Chicago. He eventually moved to Waukegan, where he died in 1905.

Henry A. Ballentine, Sherman's friend and California traveling companion, returned to Chicago in 1852, where he entered the wholesale grocery business. In 1864 he moved to Michigan and worked in his family's lumber, salt, and shipping business. He later moved to Arkansas and Colorado, where he died in 1890.