Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Turner, Charles

Born: 1825-03-02 Blandford, Massachusetts

Flourished: 1854 to 1880 Pekin, Illinois

Charles Turner, attorney and public official, moved to Summit County, Ohio with his family in 1832, where he attended the common schools. He continued his education at the Twinsburg Institute and taught at that school himself in 1847 and 1848. Turner read law in a legal office in Painesville, Ohio in 1848, but left his studies the following year to travel to California during the gold rush. On reaching California he took ill and traveled to the Hawaiian Islands to recuperate, from whence he sailed around Cape Horn as a hand on a whaling ship. After arriving home in Ohio in 1850, Turner returned to his legal studies and qualified at the bar in 1851. He subsequently relocated permanently to Pekin, Illinois, where he was practicing law as early as 1854. Turner was involved in a handful of legal cases with Abraham Lincoln in Tazewell County Circuit Court in the 1850s. He served as city clerk of Pekin from 1857 to 1859 and was elected states attorney for Tazewell County in 1860. On the advent of the Civil War Turner supported union and in 1862 was an organizer of the Union League of America in Pekin. Turner recruited and was elected lieutenant colonel of a company in Pekin which became part of 108th Regiment of Illinois Volunteer Infantry in August of 1862. He was promoted to colonel the following year, and was appointed brevet brigadier general in March of 1865 for his service in the campaign against Mobile. Turner was mustered out in August of 1865 and returned to his legal career. He was elected treasurer of Tazewell County that same year and held the position until 1867, when he resigned to become judge of the Twenty-First Illinois Judicial Circuit. Politically, Turner was initially a Whig, and following the dissolution of that party he became a Republican. He was a member of the Freemasons. He married Sarah E. Henry in 1853 and was survived by four children.

Atlas Map of Tazewell County Illinois (Davenport, IA: Andreas, Lyter, 1873), 31; Twinsburg, Ohio 1817-1917 (Twinsburg, OH: Champlain Press, 1917), 486; Report of the Proceedings of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, held at Cincinnati, Ohio, April 6 and 7, 1881 (Cincinnati: F. W. Freeman, 1881), 42; History of Tazewell County Illinois (Chicago: Chas. C. Chapman, 1879), 369, 386-87, 615, 616, 708, 713, 714, 715; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Summit County, OH, 372; Ohio, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1774-1993, 20 October 1853, Portage County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); John Livingston, Livingston’s Law Register (New York: Monthly Law Magazine, 1854), 94; For legal cases involving Lincoln, search Participant, “Turner, Charles,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Pekin, Tazewell County, IL, 74; The Press and Tribune (Chicago, IL), 3 August 1860, 4:4; The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 17 August 1860, 3:1; Illinois Civil War Muster and Descriptive Rolls, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1:974; Bloomington Daily Pantagraph (IL), 14 July 1880, 1:3.