Frank was born in about 1907 in Virginia. The first record we have of him is dated April 21, 1910 when he was just three years old. The US Federal Census has no record of parents at his home in Hiawassim, Pulaski, Virginia.

The desolate rocky island off the coast of San Francisco became a maximum security federal prison on July 1, 1934. The first residents of the newly created Alcatraz received numbers 1-32, the very first of them to be incarcerated there, Federal Prisoner #1, was Frank Lucas Bolt, a young Army member, serving a five-year sentence for having committed sodomy acts in the military.