As to many other judges and attorneys of the bench and bar of Story County, some of the oldest of whom yet live and work, it is scarcely time to speak. It may in general be said that those who may not have been brilliant were at least painstaking and earnest in their work, which is much the better. Their monuments are still under the mallet and the chisel, which themselves yet wield.
McFarland and Crocker and Hull and Woods are dead. Maj.-Gen. M. M. Crocker's fame as a brave and able soldier is a part of Iowa's proud heritage. As the friend and confidant of McPherson, as the organizer of the famous Iowa Brigade which bore his name throughout the war, as one whose memory is cherished in the hearts of the people, the State did honor to herself in ordering his features to be frescoed in her capitol. It may please some old-time citizens of Story County, many of whom knew him well, to be told that in his failing health and fading life he turned with pleasure to memories of men and things of interest alike to him and to them. His last meal in Iowa, taken when on his way from his command in Arizona to report to President Lincoln, at Washington, where he died, was eaten at the table of a friend in this county.
Hon. D. O. Finch, long a law partner with the lamented Crocker, represented the firm in many of the causes tried in the early courts of this county. He was brilliant, witty, genial and greatly admired by the pioneers. His home was then, as now, at the State capital, where he is still engaged in law practice. He has within few years past filled the office of district attorney for the United States in the southern district of Iowa.
Hon. Enoch Eastman, who at an early day lived in Burlington, afterward in Oskaloosa, and subsequently in Eldora, was one of the pioneer lawyers who practiced in Story County. He was lieutenant-governor of the State during the war, and a member of the State Senate at the time of his death. He was the author of the patriotic sentiment inscribed on the Iowa stone in Washington's monument; "Iowa: The affection of her People, like the Rivers of her Borders, flow to an inseparable Union." It is told as an incident bordering on the pathetic, that when both were frail with advancing years, Eastman was counsel for his longtime associate of the bar, "Timber" Woods, in a cause tried in Hardin County, to which the latter was a party plaintiff. Woods then lived at Steamboat Rock, where he died at an advanced age.
What unwritten memories of the pioneer courts of Central Iowa are buried with these men!
The first attorney to locate in the new county was Isaac Romane (1854). He turned his attention gradually to farming and live stock, and drifted out of the practice of law. He removed to Missouri many years ago. George A. Kellogg came in next. He was young, modest, never of rugged health, and went to the Pacific States some years since, hoping for improved health. He is comfortably fixed at Fairhaven, on Puget Sound. James S. Frazier (1856) has been an industrious attorney, but has mixed in lands and farming at the expense of his law practice. He still lives in his pleasant home in Nevada.
John L. Dana (1856) has also dallied with real estate and pensions. He still has his home, where he has continuously lived for about thirty-five years. John Scott (1856) has been more in other lines than in the regular practice. [See biographical notice.] Paul A. Queal (1859) was a brilliant young lawyer, and bade fair to take a leading place at the bar. He died in the army, during the war. L. Irwin was a genial fellow, of good