S. Charles Bolton (1943–2024)

S. Charles Bolton was a longtime history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UA Little Rock) and an award-winning author who wrote some of the seminal works on antebellum Arkansas.

Sidney Charles Bolton was born on April 18, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, the second of three children of Franklyn Paul Bolton and Marjorie Draper Bolton.

At St. Lawrence University, where he received his undergraduate education, he was elected student body president and named to the Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honor society. He graduated in 1965 and then received a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1968. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps briefly before being honorably discharged with a knee injury, and then participated in protests against the Vietnam War. He received his doctorate in American history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1973.

Bolton was married three times—first to Susan French Hughes May, with whom he had a son and a daughter; then to Janet Ellis Dillard; and finally to Shannan Venable, with whom he had a daughter.

He joined the history department faculty at UA Little Rock in 1973 and would work there for thirty-five years, serving several terms as department chair and also as president of the Faculty Senate from 1993 to 1995. He was a prolific author, writing numerous articles in scholarly journals, as well as several books, the first of which was 1982’s Southern Anglicanism: The Church of England in Colonial South Carolina, which Church History called “an important contribution to the literature of Anglicanism in North America…most welcome in filling in some of the historical gaps in this somewhat neglected area of early colonial history.”

He wrote two books that delved into Arkansas’s early history. Territorial Ambition: Land and Society in Arkansas, 1800–1840, published in 1993, received an award of merit from the American Association for State and Local History. The Mississippi Quarterly wrote of it that, from “an economic perspective, Charles Bolton has contributed greatly to our understanding of the careful way in which white Arkansas settlers satisfied their ambitions by building a viable market economy while struggling for power and status within the territory.” Remote and Restless: Arkansas, 1800–1860, published in 1999 by the University of Arkansas Press, received the Booker Worthen Literary Prize. The American Historical Review concluded that “Arkansas during this time period was certainly a remote and restless region, and Bolton has provided us with the best overall treatment of this era to date.”

He received the Arkansas Historical Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 in honor of his work as a “groundbreaking scholar and inspiring educator.”

In 2006, Bolton wrote a historic resource study for the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, Fugitives from Injustice: Freedom-Seeking Slaves in Arkansas, 1800–1860. This provided the groundwork for 2019’s Fugitivism: Escaping Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1820–1860, for which he received a second Booker Worthen Literary Prize. An Arkansas Historical Quarterly review wrote of Fugitivism that “the questions it raises and the avenues for additional research it opens are immensely valuable, and the experiences it recounts are alternately powerful, devastating, and stirring.”

Bolton continued researching and writing after he retired in 2008, and he received the Railway and Locomotive History Association Award in 2024 for his 2021 Arkansas Historical Quarterly article “Missing the Train: Arkansas and the Pacific Railroad, 1848–1862.”

Bolton died suddenly on November 11, 2024, in an automobile accident. His obituary noted that “Charlie touched many people with his wisdom and compassion. He was a scholar who influenced many others, but was deeply humble. He loved his work.”

For additional information:
Austin, A. Kenneth. Review, Church History 54 (June 1985): 249–250.

Bolton, S. Charles. Fugitives of Injustice: Freedom-Seeking Slaves in Arkansas, 1800–1860. Historic Resources Study, National Park Service, 2006. Online at https://www.npshistory.com/publications/ugrr/hrs-ar.pdf (accessed March 20, 2025).

“Bolton/Davis (Six Bridges Book Festival).” YouTube, October 30, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQuWWY-qG6U (accessed March 20, 2025). [see Related Video in sidebar]

Murray, Gail S. Review, Mississippi Quarterly 84 (Spring 1995): 366–368.

Obituary of Sidney Charles Bolton. https://ruebelfuneralhome.com/obits/preview.php?id=3476 (accessed March 20, 2025).

Rothman, Joshua D. Review, Arkansas Historical Quarterly 84 (Spring 2020): 160–162.

Woods, James M. Review, American Historical Review 105 (February 2000): 215–216.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas