Peter Golder, son of Peter Golder and Deborah Wood, was born in Dutchess County, July 5, 1819; learned to make shoes as a means to gain a legal education; went to Ontario county, where, at Victor, he married Mary Jane, daughter of Hervey Hickox and Lydia West. March 3, 1841 ; came to Kenosha in 1842, and in the same year to Elkhorn. He studied law while he made and mended boots and was admitted to practice in 1850. About 1855 he formed a short-lived partnership with James Densmore, of the “Independent.”
In 1857 he was elected county judge (over Hollis Latham) and held that place for twenty-nine years. Squire Smith said that “God made Peter for a probate judge,”—this by reason of his qualities as a man and a lawyer: He was a life-long student and also a reader of the best things in literature, from the Atlantic Monthly to the “Republic of God.” As a personal friend he was one not to be forgotten by any who deserves to be himself remembered. His wife, born at Victor, September 15, 1819, died at Elkhorn. December 6, 1889.
Judge Golder’s increasing deafness compelled his retirement. He went to Norborne, Missouri, to live with his adopted daughter. Helen Laura, whose husband, George Dana Viles, had gone there to become a banker. Before his death. July 1 1, 1900, he was wholly deaf and blind.
From: Beckwith, A.C. (1912). History of Walworth County Wisconsin