Judge NC Read was a native of Champaign County, Ohio, born on the Mack Jack, about the year 1810. He was educated at Athens College, Athens, OH, and studied law with the Hon Israel Hamilton at Urbana. After admission to the bar, he removed to Cincinnati, where he early displayed great talent as an advocate, especially in criminal cases. So great was his popularity that at the age of twenty-six he was made Prosecuting Attorney for Hamilton County, and before his thirtieth year was elected President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1841, the Legislature chose him Judge of the Supreme Court in place of Judge Grimke resigned. This position he held until February, 1849. Upon leaving the bench, Judge Read returned to Cincinnati, but left shortly afterwards for California. He practiced two or three years in San Francisco, but soon fell a victim to that vice which has proven a destroyer of so many of our distinguished men. He died in 1853 at the early age of forty three years.
Judge Read was a man of elegant scholarship, an erratic genius, whose whole-souled liberality and generous hospitality proved his ruin. Whatever his faults, he was a genial companion, and we can but pity the weakness that proved his downfall.
