Stagecoaches on the trail between Chicago and Galena began to ford the Rock River in the early 1830s, leading to formation of the county of Winnebago in 1836.

John C. Kemble, the first lawyer to trod the dusty streets between his pioneer office and the old frame building that housed the Winnebago County Court, was insane.

Perhaps of sound mind when he opened his practice in 1837, his tenure in city and county history lasted but three years. Kemble died in an asylum in 1840, the year after Rockford was incorporated as a city.

Rockford's first woman attorney, Alta May Hulett, is revered in Illinois legal history, but her practice was similarly brief.

Born in Rockton in 1854, Hulett graduated from Rockford High School at age 16. She taught school by day and read law in the evenings as a clerk for attorney William Lathrop. She passed the bar exam at age 17 but was denied admission.

Hulett's subsequent legislative lobbying opened doors of the profession to women, and in 1873, at age 19, she became the first one admitted.

Alas for Rockford, however, she began practicing in Chicago. Three years later, she contracted pulmonary consumption and moved to California, where she died in 1877.

That was the year that the legislature created the 13th Judicial Circuit, which included Winnebago County, and Benjamin R. Sheldon of Rockford, once a judge in the former 7th Circuit, was chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

It also was the year that 88 lawyers from 37 counties gathered in Springfield to establish the Illinois State Bar Association.

Three decades passed before a committee of Rockford lawyers drafted bylaws for a county bar association in 1906. The first meeting of the Winnebago County Bar was held Feb. 9, 1907. Edward Lathrop, the son of Alta Hulett's tutor, was elected president.

A 1906 photo composite in the bar association office depicts the 95 lawyers and judges who had practiced in Rockford after portrait photography was popularized. The mug shot of William Lathrop in the center is the largest.

Two photos of women lawyers are included, Carrie Libby Rapp and Marion E. Garmory, but no record exists of whether they were members of the bar association.

In the June 2, 1900, issue of Chicago Legal News, a listing of women lawyers of Illinois notes the admission in 1897 of Rapp, and in 1898 of Garmory, who practiced in the Rockford office of R. K. Welsh, one of the founding members.

Another of the founders, Albert D. Early, became in 1916 the first of three Rockford attorneys who served as president of the Illinois State Bar.

The second was William D. Knight, president of the WCBA in 1938 and the ISBA in 1938-39. His wife became the first president of the Association of Wives of Illinois Lawyers.

Karl C. Williams, WCBA president in 1952, was ISBA president in 1954-55. He served on the blue-ribbon committee that drafted and supported passage of a new judicial article that was narrowly defeated in the 1958 state election.

After Edward Lathrop's one-year term as WCBA president, 12 Rockford lawyers alternated as presidents during the next 24 years. The current president, Winnebago County state's attorney Paul Logli, is the 86th to sit in the chair of leadership.

Mary P. Gorman became the association's first woman president in 1993-94, and she served simultaneously as chair of the ISBA Committee on Unauthorized Practice of Law.

Later a member of the Commercial, Bank-ing and Bankruptcy Law Section Council, Gorman became a judge of U.S. Bankruptcy Court last year.

Nancy Hyzer was WCBA president in 2002-03, 21 years after her husband and law partner, Keith H. Hyzer, served in 1981-82.

Two past presidents have become Laureates of the ISBA Academy of Illinois Lawyers. John T. Holmstrom Jr. (1971) was inducted as a member of the first class in 2000 by Thomas S. Johnson (1990-91), then chancellor of the Academy Board of Regents. Johnson was inducted last year.

Thirty members of the WCBA are listed in the ISBA Blue Book as members of section councils and committees, including Assembly delegates John J. Holevas, Frank A. Perrecone, Nerino J. Petro and Donald P. Shriver.

Dawn R. Hallsten chairs the General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section Council, and Petro is vice chair of the Committee on Legal Technology.

Section council secretaries include Michael W. Raridon of Juvenile Just-ice, John L. Shepherd of Workers' Compen-sation, and Steven P. Zimmerman of Real Estate Law.

Immediate past chairs of section councils include Aaron W. Brooks of Intellectual Property, and Sherri R. Rudy of Elder Law. Rosemary Collins, the first woman judge of the 17th Circuit, serves on the Committee on Judicial Advisory Polls.