Wilbur Bolton
Wilbur Zenas Bolton was born on 6 April 1902 at Wenas, in Yakima County, Washington. His parents were Zenas Bolton, a rancher born in Iowa, and Nancy Salina Kelly, called Nannie, who had been born in the Wenas valley in 1876. His father's parents, Daniel and Elizabeth Bolton, had crossed the plains to Oregon in the early 1850s. His mother's father, Thomas Kelly, had come overland from Kentucky in 1848 and settled in the Wenas country in 1871.
Wilbur was the fourth of six children. His brother Claudie lived only from 1894 to 1895. His sister Theresa Eunice was born in 1896 and his brother Asa Simeon in 1899. The twins Homer Daniel and Virgil Thomas were born about 1906. In the 1910 census the family was farming in the Wenas valley, and Wilbur appears as Zenas W. Bolton, aged eight.
His father died of apoplexy on 8 August 1918, when Wilbur was sixteen. In 1920 he was living with his widowed mother and his brothers Asa, Homer and Virgil in the Simcoe precinct of Yakima County.
On 15 April 1922 Wilbur married Adrien Lefebure, daughter of Arthur Lefebure and Florence Lajanue. That marriage had ended by 1927. On 22 June 1927 he married Lillian Helen Smrz in King County. She was the daughter of Frank and Mary Smrz, a Bohemian family who had homesteaded in Montana and come to Seattle in 1918.
Their son Gordon Wilbur Bolton was born on 18 April 1928 at Renton. Their daughter Lois Theresa followed on 25 July 1929. In 1930 they lived in Seattle with Lillian's sister Anna. In 1940 they were in the same Seattle house they had lived in in 1935.
On 14 February 1942 Wilbur registered for the draft in Seattle. He was working for the Seattle Export Lumber Company, and he named J. C. Kaintz as his contact, probably the husband of Lillian's sister Alice. In 1950 he, Lillian, Gordon and Lois were still in Seattle.
Wilbur Zenas Bolton died in Seattle on 11 December 1976, aged 74. He is buried at Evergreen-Washelli Memorial Park in Seattle, in Section 14, Lot 0277, Grave 4. Lillian outlived him by thirteen years and was buried beside him under a stone that reads BOLTON, WILBUR Z. 1902 1976, LILLIAN 1904 1989.
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Cite: Heirology, "Wilbur Bolton (1902-1976)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/wilbur-bolton-1902-1976-076e5f.