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PERRY C. BOLGER
Vol. 3, p. 1264

Judge Perry C. BOLGER, a lawyer by profession and the present judge
for LeFlore County, was born in Columbia, County, Arkansas, November
4, 1867. He is a son of Hiram P. and Sarah E. (MATHEWS) Bolger,
natives of South Carolina and Georgia respectively.

Hiram Bolger was reared in Georgia, and passed through the Civil war
as a soldier of the Confederacy. Returning to his home he married
Sarah MATHEWS, the daughter of Capt. James P. Mathews, who served in
the Confederate army through-out the war in an Arkansas regiment.
Following his marriage he migrated to Arkansas and settled on a farm
in Columbia County, where he remained until about 1879. In that year
he gave up farm life, and thereafter devoted himself to the
mercantile business at Magnolia, Arkansas.

Perry C. Bolger was twelve years old when his parents left the farm
and engaged in business in Magnolia. There, in the public schools, he
gained a sufficient training to enable him to teach school, and for
six years he was occupied in that profession. With the savings from
his earnings in those years the young man defrayed the expenses of a
law course in Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Virginia,
and in 1890 he was admitted to the bar of Arkansas. He did not then
engage in independent practice, but entered the office of WOOD and
HENDERSON, a prominent law firm of Hot Springs, where he passed two
years, thus gaining an experience that he could not have acquired in
a much longer time as a free lance in the legal world. He spent
another two years in school teaching in Arkansas, then came to Indian
Territory and hung out the proverbial shingle at Cameron, on August
30, 1895. It was then that his professional career began in earnest.
In 1896 he was appointed referee in bankruptcy and probate
commissioner by Judge William H. H. CLAYTON of the United States
District Court at Cameron. The appointing judge was a republican in
politics and Mr. Bolger was a democrat, but the appointment was made,
as Judge Clayton said "because there was no republican member of the
bar at Cameron who was not then holding an office." This office Mr.
Bolger filled with credit, and his service was terminated by; the
admission of Oklahoma to the sisterhood of states in 1907. The United
States District Court was moved to Poteau, Indian Territory, in 1900,
and in September of that year Mr. Bolger took up his residence in
that place, and there he has since resided.

With Oklahoma's admission to statehood, Mr. Bolger was designated by
the Constitutional Convention as the first county clerk of LeFlore
County, and by virtue of his position he served as chairman o the
first election board for his county. He was also the first democratic
state committeeman for LeFlore County.

In 1910 came his election to the office of county judge. He was re-
elected in 1912 and again succeeded himself in 1914. His efficiency
record in that office has been an enviable one, and out of several
cases appealed form his court, only one decision has been reversed.

Judge Bolger has given considerable attention to farming in LeFlore
County, and has a fine farm of 100 acres which he purchased from the
Federal Government as an unallotted tract. His interests in a local
way extend in various directions and he is president of the National
Bank of Poteau, to which office he was elected in January 1915, and
re-elected in 1916.

On June 25, 1913, Judge Bolger was married to Miss May STALCUP, a
native of Tennessee.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Jean Owens October 12, 1998.