from 1851 to 1867 157

of decisions of the older court. The official
reporting of decisions, directed by the new consti-
tution, was to begin only with cases heard by the
new judges, and on May 10, 1852, therefore, the
court gave Mrs. Gill, widow of the clerk, permis-
sion to use the opinions of the court and other pro-
ceedings in order to finish her husband's reports.
And for the actual work she employed Oliver
Miller, who was to become one of the ablest and
best known of the judges, but who was then a
young man of twenty-eight years, and had been
only two years at the bar. The General Assembly
took up the constitutional provision for official re-
ports at its session of 1852, and by an act, chapter
55 of that year, created the office of State Re-
porter, to be filled by appointment by the judges
for terms of four years. It directed that the reports
should contain at least six hundred pages, corre-
sponding in size, form, quality of materials and
quantity of matter per page with the fourteenth
volume of New Hampshire reports, published in
1851, and that their style should be "Maryland
Reports." In compliance with the act, the court
appointed Alexander Contee Magruder, a judge
of the court from 1844 to 1851, to be the first State
Reporter. Judge Magruder died in the following
February, 1853, after having prepared the ma-
terial for 1 and 2 Maryland Reports; and then the
court appointed Oliver Miller to the position.

Two changes on the bench occurred during the
first ten years. Judge Mason resigned his office
in 1857, and James Lawrence Bartol, then of Bal-
timore County, was first appointed, and later
elected, to the position of judge from the first dis-