Judge Perry C. BOLGER
"Judge Perry C. Bolger, a lawyer by profession and the present judge of 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 throughout 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 U.S. 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 of the first election board for his county. He was also the first democratic state committeeman from 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 from 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 First 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."