case volume began to increase in 1822, Blackford became aware of the problems presented by having no reporter of the decisions. He began maintaining a personal collection of the Supreme Court decisions in hopes the Indiana General Assembly would eventually authorize funds to create an official report. After his personal tragedies while he remained locked in his room, Blackford began working on a book to report the important decisions of the Supreme Court and provide a legal source to state lawyers and judges. He was meticulous and precise in his writing. Biographer William Thornton attributed his ability to write concisely to the fact that he never practiced law extensively, and never developed the habit of writing lengthy arguments, but instead kept his thoughts clear and precise. Each volume he authored covered a decade of court decisions and was published four years after the decade was complete. So careful was Blackford in ensuring the quality and accuracy of the work that he regularly held up printing to make corrections found after a few volumes were printed, and after they were printed, if an error was reported, he would destroy the existing copies and have new ones made. He used his own savings to have the books published with the intention of selling them to lawyers in Indiana. The sale of the books brought Blackford a substantial income, and he earned between $1,500 and $2,000 annually on royalties. Blackford's Reports were thorough and detailed thanks to Blackford's effort to keep them accurate. His reputation for accuracy became well known. On one occasion a lawyer arguing before the court seeking to delay a decision questioned Blackford on the spelling of the word "jenny", a female donkey, a word he knew would be in the report. Blackford responded with the spelling and lawyer again questioned him if he was certain that word was not spelled "jennie". Not wanting to be hasty and enter an incorrectly spelled word onto the record, Blackford delayed the decision for two days while experts were consulted as to the proper spelling. By the time the answer had come the court session had ended and decision was delayed for several months. Blackford published the first of his eight volumes of Blackford's Reports in 1830, covering court cases between 1816 and 1826. It was immediately in demand among the state's judicial establishment as there were at that time no other readily