The first district judge for Linn county after the adoption of the new constitution in 1857, was Hon. William E. Miller, of Iowa City, and Isaac L. Allen, of Toledo, was elected district attorney--this in 1858. Allen was afterwards attorney general of the state. Judge Miller was well equipped for the position. With a thorough common school education, and having been a practical machinist when young, and with strong common sense, he had a naturally good judicial mind that had been improved by careful study and years of practice in the law. He came to the bench an intelligent, fair, and courteous judge. He resigned in 1862 and entered the Union army as colonel of the Twenty-eighth Iowa Volunteer Infantry. He afterwards served as circuit judge and finally as supreme judge of the state. From the resignation of Judge Miller till January 1, 1867, the district bench was graced in its occupancy by Judge N. W. Isbell, C. H. Conklin, and N. M. Hubbard. Judge Miller was a broad-shouldered, short, squatty fellow, and though a good lawyer and jurist, he was an indifferent advocate, and not particularly strong as a trial lawyer. Judge Conklin was probably the most scholarly, accomplished and profound lawyer that ever sat on the district bench in this part of the state. His home was in Vinton, and while he lived among the people there he did not seem to be of them. He was a strong, tall, raw-boned man, always carefully dressed, with a most marked intellectual face, and he was certainly one of the most eloquent advocates that ever stood before a jury in eastern Iowa. Judge James H. Rothrock, of Tipton, was elected judge in 1866, and served on the district bench till in February, 1876, when he was, by the governor, appointed to a seat on the supreme bench, which position he filled for over twenty years, when he voluntarily declined a further renomination. He, too, entered the Union army in 1862 as lieutenant colonel of the Thirty-fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and served with credit till sickness compelled him to resign and come home. Judge Rothrock was not a learned man in the sense of having a college education or having possessed an extensive breadth of general reading in history or science, nor was he fluent of speech, or particularly adroit as a practitioner, but he possessed naturally good judgment, a most thorough common English education, a good knowledge of the law and its basic principles, a sound understanding, with an innate sense of justice. He was patient and even tempered, dignified, and kind. He made a splendid _nisi prius_ judge. His opinions were always plain, couched in good strong Anglo-Saxon, terse and sound, and will long bear the close and sharp criticism of posterity. Whenever he announced a principle of law, it was accepted without dispute as the law on the point involved. Judge Rothrock was a large man of fine physique, impressible presence, and very genial when off the bench.