James H. Rothrock
James H. Rothrock was born at Milroy, Pa., in 1829. In 1838, his father removed to Mt. Leigh in Adams County, where he took up wild woodland. Our subject attended schools three months each winter and the remainder of the year he spent in aiding his father subdue the wilderness. Thus he spent ten years, but in that time was schooled in humanity. His father was a Binny Abolitionist and his home was a station on the Underground Railroad. The next station north was Flat Run in Highland County, and in the ten years, from his ninth to his nineteenth year, our subject piloted not less than three hundred slaves between the stations on their road to freedom. That work was a good lesson for the boy and helped make the man. From 1848 to 1850, he attended an academy at Felicity and taught school. From 1850 to 1852, he attended Franklin College at New Athens, Ohio. In 1852, he went to West Union and began the study of the law under the late Edward P. Evans, father of the writer of this sketch. During the time he was studying law, he taught school to earn his living. In the spring of 1852, he and Alexander Woodrow were the only two persons in West Union who cast their votes for John P. Hale for President. In the spring of 1854, he and his preceptor went to Columbus, where he was admitted to the bar. He at once located in Greenfield, in Highland County, where he began the practice of law. Here, on the fifteenth of October, 1855, he was married to Miss Austie Foote. That same fall he was elected to the office of Prosecuting Attorney of Highland County and served one term. He was a candidate for re-election in 1857. but was defeated. He removed to Hillsboro in 1858 and remained there until 1860, when he removed to and located in Tipton, the county seat of Cedar County. Iowa. In 1861, he was elected to the Iowa Legislature and served part of the time as Speaker, pro tem. In July. 1862, he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the 35th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and in that organization distinguished himself by signal bravery in battle. General William L. Davis, in speaking of the attack on the rebel works at Vicksburg, in which the 35th Iowa participated, said: "Lieutenant-Colonel Rothrock sprang to the front, ordered the regiment to charge, and, taking the lead, with hat in one hand and sword in the other, the Thirty-fifth went into that awful shower of lead and iron. The line was repulsed everywhere with fearful slaughter. No braver man than he ever drew a sword or held the affection of his soldiers more strongly." However, his constitution was broken down by the hardships of the service, and he was compelled to resign in the fall of 1863. In 1866, he was nominated and elected District Judge. He served as such nine years, when the Governor of the State appointed him to the Supreme Bench to fill a vacancy. He was elected for the succeeding term and re-elected until he voluntarily retired after twenty-one years' service. His opinions are found from the 41 to the 101 Iowa Reports.
When he retired from the Supreme Judgeship, Judge H. E. Deemer. one of his associates, on the Supreme Bench, said of him: "He is a man of good, common, hard sense, who took his diploma from the school of experience, and has risen to his present proud position through honest and earnest endeavor. A man who has the best judgment upon important questions of any man with whom I ever came into contact, a man who is king among men. He gave thirtv years of continuous judicial service to his State, seven years in the District and twenty-one years on the Supreme Bench. His work as a jurist was painstaking and thorough. He never wrote an opinion without the most conscientious research. He did his best every time."
The strength of his decisions were not only recognized in Iowa, but in Ohio as well. In the latter State, his old friends of the bar always sought out his decisions and were proud to cite and rely on them as the best law. To the Hon. N. M. Hubbard, his fellow townsman, we are indebted for an estimate of his character, which is most accurate. He said of Judge Rothrock: "His chief characteristics are probity, common sense and an unbiased judgment. His opinions were the result of reasoning, never of feeling. His decisions not only convinced the successful party that they were the law, but convinced the losing parties that their causes had been decided rightfully. His opinions are contained in sixty-one volumes of the Iowa Reports. They are models of compact statements, and clear analysis, which lead to irresistible conclusions. His language is plain, simple and terse Saxon. He was not a great scholar, nor of any considerable literary attainments, but he had the remarkable faculty of expressing himself in plain English so as to be clearly understood and to convince the reader by his forceful reasonings. He is a good talker, a better listener, and of rare judicial talent. The people of Iowa, without dissent, honor him as one of its first citizens and most eminent jurists."
The wife of his youth died April 9, 1803. He has three sons. Edward E., born in 1850; James H, in 1869, and George L., in 1873. The writer, as a boy, went to school to him in West Union while he was a law student. He was then a boarder at the home of his preceptor, and there the writer became acquainted with him. When this history was projected, he opened a correspondence with the Judge and several pleasant letters were exchanged. The Judge looked forward with pleasure to the time when he could read of his Ohio friends, those of his childhood and youth in this history, but alas! that was never to be! Those years of leisure to which he and his family looked forward with pleasure were never to be lived by him. November 17, 1898. he wrote: "My race is nearly run. After three score and ten, there is little left but to wait the end." When he wrote those words, he little realized how near he was to the end. He died on the fifteenth of January. 1899. His funeral was honored by the attendance of the Governor and Supreme Judges of the State and by numerous distinguished citizens as well as by his townsmen. He has left a grand and noble memory, and those who knew him in Ohio in his boyhood and young manhood, cherish it equally with the citizens of Iowa, who knew him so well. Adams County is proud of the history of his life.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900