Colonel Isaac M. Preston was born in Bennington, Vermont, in 1813, the son of a revolutionary soldier. He learned the trade of cabinet-making. At an early age he drifted west, remained for awhile in Ohio, and finally located in Marion in 1842, where he began the practice of law. Three years later he was appointed district attorney, serving two years. In February, 1846, he was commissioned colonel to organize troops for the Mexican war. He served as probate judge of Linn county for four years. He was appointed by President Polk, United States attorney for Iowa in 1847. In 1850 he was elected to the house of the Third General Assembly, and after serving one term was elected to the state senate where, during four years in the Fourth and Fifth General Assemblies, he was one of the most prominent legislators of that body and took an active part in the enactment of the Code of 1851. Colonel Preston had more litigation in his day and generation than any one person in this and adjoining counties. He was strong before a court, tactful and invincible before a jury, and especially in the defense of criminal cases he had no superior. The bar of Linn county during the early days was one of the strongest in the state, and Colonel Preston during his long and active practice before the supreme court, held a high place and was recognized as one of the leading attorneys of eastern Iowa, a position to which he early attained and which he continuously held up to the time of his death. William Smythe was born in Tyrone county, Ireland, in 1824. He emigrated with his parents at the age of fifteen to America and located in Linn county in 1840. He studied law at Iowa City, and in 1848 opened an office in Marion. In 1853 he was appointed judge of the fourth judicial district, serving four years. In 1858 he was chosen by the Seventh General Assembly one of the three commissioners to revise and codify the laws of the state. This work was accepted by the legislature and became what is known as the "Code of 1860." Judge Smythe was also appointed upon a commission of legal inquiry, and was one of the commissioners to negotiate bonds by the state to provide a war defense fund. He served two years in the army as colonel of the Thirty-first Iowa Infantry. In politics Judge Smythe was a republican, and from the beginning of his legal career he took more or less interest in politics. In 1868 he and Judge Hubbard were the republican candidates for congress, a campaign which was waged with much bitterness, so much so that friend turned against friend and neighbor against neighbor. It is said that a few days after Hubbard's defeat he met a shoe-maker on the street who had been a former friend but who had been persuaded to vote for Smythe, and Hubbard said to him, "Jack, you will not need to buy any bristles any more, just reach your hand over your shoulder and you can pull them out of your back, for there is nothing about you but a hog anyway."