From 1912 until his death in 1936, Bolton was the president of the Rapides Bank and Trust Company, later part of Bank One Corporation. Bolton was born in Winnfield in Winn Parish, Louisiana, to George Washington Bolton and the former Tennessee Wade, the daughter of his father's business partner. His first wife, the former Annie White, died in 1895, after fewer than two years of marriage. On October 21, 1896, he married the former Mary Esther Calderwood. There three children were James Calderwood Bolton, Robert Harvey Bolton, and Mrs. Charles L. Brown. Both Bolton sons were bankers too. In addition to his bank presidency, Bolton was president of the LouisianaBankers Association from 1916–1917 and a member of the executive council of the American Bankers Association from 1920 to 1923. His father had been the first president of the Louisiana Bankers Association. He sat on the board of trustees for the Peabody Institute in Nashville, Tennessee. He was on the original advisory board of the New Orleans branch of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was established in 1932 in the Hoover administration to provide loans to prevent large businesses from collapse during the Great Depression. For years, Bolton represented Rapides Parish on the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee. Bolton was a member of the board of trustees of Baptist Hospital in Alexandria, now Rapides Medical Center. He was also a member of the executive board of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, president of the board of trustees of the large Emmanuel Baptist Church in downtown Alexandria, and the chairman of the committee that constructed the first brick church building. He was a member of the Masonic lodge, a Shriner, and a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. For three decades, Bolton served on the elected Rapides Parish School Board, eighteen of those years as board president. Under his leadership, the Rapides system, and particularly Bolton High School, became an educational model for the state. Bolton High School was founded in 1915 in the Garden District of Alexandria on land donated by Bolton. The current facility, a project of the contractor George A. Caldwell of Baton Rouge, opened in 1926. At Bolton's prodding, the board established a student loan fund to assist in the education of future teachers. James and Mary Bolton are interred at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Pineville, across the Red River from Alexandria. Long after his death, River Oaks, the Bolton home, was donated in the 1980s to the city of Alexandria as a center for contemporary regional arts and crafts.
