Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 652
HON. L. R. BOLTER

This gentleman distinguished himself for being one of the ablest lawyers and statesmen of his part of the state. He was the leader in Democratic politics and a man of much native, as well as acquired ability. He was purely an American and was born in Richland county, Ohio, in 1834 and died at his home in Logan, Iowa, April 29, 1901. L. R. BOLTER had taught school in young manhood and also had kept books for the Wells Fargo Express Company in the Rocky Mountain district long before the building of railroads west of the Missouri. He earned sufficient money in the west at clerking and mining to come to Harrison county, Iowa, and purchase a good tract of land which he steadily added to, as the years rolled by, so that when he died he was accounted a wealthy man. His extensive legal practice, however, made him independent of the world's needs without the large returns from his broad acres.

Mr. BOLTER was more times state senator than any other man in Iowa. He also enjoyed the peculiar distinction of having delivered more than twenty-five consecutive Fourth of July orations within the borders of Iowa. He was admitted to the bar before Hon. Isaac PENDLETON, an early Sioux City judge, in 1865. In 1876 he was candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket. He was defeated by Col. W. F. SAPP, but Mr. BOLTER said in his campaign of thirteen long weeks: "If defeated, a sufficient solace shall be found in the consciousness that I neither sold my friends nor corruptly purchased my enemies to gratify my own ambition, or secure success in a just cause."

Mr. BOLTER's intellectual possession, coupled with his happy manner of speech and general mode of address, made him a popular factor in the great busy world around him. Not only during the regular hours through the day, but for many years he spent the midhours of the night at his desk with his books. His was a well-rounded life, full of good thoughts and good deeds. His family consisted of wife and three children, Charles R., deceased; Carroll A., now of Logan, Iowa, a capitalist and attorney, and Florence M., the wife of Dr. I. C. WOOD.

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