Turner, Lewis C. S., M. D.

TURNER, PARKS, SHAW, SUMNER, FISHER, PEASE, SAMS, PRESTON

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 10/23/2009 at 07:00:30

Turner, Lewis C. S., M. D.

Among the leaders in the medical profession in central Iowa the name of Dr. Lewis C. S. Turner, of Colfax, Jasper County, must be included, for his practice here of nearly thirty years has won him a wide reputation among his contemporaries, who, with his wife, also a physician of well established repute, is proprietor of the Turner Rest Home and Sanitarium, which has a prestige second to none of its kind in the state. But, indeed, no man possessing the heritage of character and ability which Doctor Turner has received from his ancestors could fail to live a life of usefulness, controlled by correct principles and high ideals, his progenitors including that sterling patriotic stock which helped successfully to establish the early American colonies, who sacrificed life in Washington's Army in the struggle for independence, who bore the vicissitudes of the great Rebellion on the sanguinary battle fields of the South, who, as pioneer physician, faced the dangers and hardships on the western frontier in the service of administering to the ills to which humanity is heir-men and women who, in their station, nobly fulfilled their myriad duties. Such an inheritance is more to be desired than "much fine gold."

Doctor Turner was born in Poweshiek Township, Jasper County, Iowa, on November 2, 1854, the son of Charles Carroll Turner and Ann E. (Parks) Turner, the father born in Oxford County, Maine, in 1826, the son of Joseph Turner, whose birth occurred on June 12, 1799, the latter's home being at Dedham, Massachusetts, and whose wife was known in her maidenhood as Nancy Shaw. Joseph Turner was the son of Ebenezer and Polly (Sumner) Turner, the former born in 1772, the son of Lieutenant Edward and Hannah (Fisher) Turner. Edward Turner was an officer in the colonial army and he fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and while in the service for freedom he contracted smallpox, which caused his death at Half Moon, Massachusetts, in December 1777. The first American ancestor of the Turners came to Massachusetts in the early colonial days and settled twenty miles from Boston. The family of Joseph Turner came to Mindon, Adams County, Illinois, in 1834 the father of the subject of this sketch being then eight years of age, and there he grew to maturity, the Prairie State at that time being practically a wilderness. He remained in Illinois until 1850, when he came to Jasper County, Iowa, among the very early settlers, and located on a farm three miles north of the present site of Colfax, which land is still owned by his widow, Mrs. Mary C. (Pease) Turner, and their son, Ed S. Turner. Charles C. Turner became one of the influential farmers of the county in his day. He was the owner of over two hundred acres of good land and he was an extensive breeder of fine grades of livestock. He was active in public affairs, first as a Whig, then as a Republican. He was elected clerk of the district court of Jasper County, holding office from 1854 to 1857; he was also county surveyor for two terms, from 1868 to 1872, and he was justice of the peace and assessor for four full terms. He was a charter member of Newton Lodge No. 59, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. He proved his patriotism in 1862 when he enlisted in the Federal Army and proved to be a gallant soldier in the Fortieth Iowa Volunteer Infantry. For a time he was sent home on recruiting service. While in the field he was at Columbus and Paducah, Kentucky; Satarsia, Mississippi, Haines Bluff and Snyder Bluff, and after the fall of Vicksburg he was on reserve duty. He was in Arkansas at the taking of Little Rock, and he was the first with his brother-in-law, Hugh A. Pease, to cross the river on a pontoon bridge, October 10, 1863. He was mustered out at Davenport, Iowa, on April 1, 1864. His death occurred on August 7, 1907, at an advanced age, after a useful and honorable career. Andrew Pease, father of Mrs. Mary C. (Pease) Turner, was also one of the worthy "boys in blue," having served in Company I, Thirty-seventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry, the noted "Graybeard Volunteers," he having enlisted when fifty-eight years of age, on December 15, 1862, and his death occurred while in the service, at Alton, Illinois, on January 10, 1863, he having been on guard duty there.

Ann E. Parks, maiden name of the mother of Dr. Lewis C. S. Turner, of this sketch, was born in Noble County, Indiana, October 2, 1836, the daughter of Dr. Hiram S. Parks, who was one of the pioneer physicians of Poweshiek Township, Jasper county, Iowa, and he practiced medicine here until 1863, when he went to Kansas. He made his calls on horseback, going long distances in all kinds of weather, enduring great hardships, following Indian trails, often swimming or fording dangerous streams, sometimes in the roughest winter weather. He was a good doctor and was highly esteemed by the entire locality. The death of Mrs. Ann E. Turner occurred on May 10, 1856.

On June 4, 1857, Charles C. Turner was married a second time, his last wife being Mary Catherine Pease, one of the early teachers of this county, who taught the first school in her district. She was a woman of high educational attainments and a strong character. She directed the education of her only stepchild, and at the age of nineteen, Lewis C. S. Turner, of this sketch, began teaching in the common schools of this county. He entered Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, in 1873, and he also attended Central University at Pella, Iowa, in 1874. In June 1877, he finished the course at the Baylies Mercantile College at Keokuk, this state, and in 1878 he was graduated from Pierce's Normal Institute of Penmanship of the last named city. He began the study of medicine under Doctors Tillman Sterns, of Mitchellville, Iowa, and J. J. M. Angear, of Fort Madison, Iowa, later of Chicago. Since March 1, 1882. Doctor Turner has been successfully engaged in the practice of his profession at Colfax and has built up a large, lucrative and ever growing patronage. He has kept well abreast of the times in everything that pertains to his practice, having always been a profound student and a vigorous and independent researcher. He is a member of the Jasper County, the Des Moines District and the Iowa State Medical societies. Since 1888 he has been health officer of Colfax and a member of the school board from 1892 to 1895. A graduate pharmacist, he dispenses his own drugs. He makes a specialty of eye, nose and throat and obstetrics, and his skill in these lines has placed him in the front rank of his professional brethren.

On October 21, 1878, Doctor Turner was united in marriage with Alice B. Sams, one of the leading lady practitioners of medicine in central Iowa, an individual sketch of whom appears on another page of this work. This union has been graced by the birth of two children: Vera, who married J. W. Preston, of Port Lavaca, Texas. They have one daughter, Ruth Alice, born July 13, 1911. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, and for a time she taught in the Jasper county schools; she is a member of the Des Moines chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Carroll J. Turner was graduated from the Colfax high school and is now at college, preparing to follow in the footsteps of his parents and devote his life to the medical profession.

Doctor Turner is a man of agreeable social nature, pleasing personality. Religiously, he is a Unitarian. He has been active in many works in Colfax, always ready to do what he could in furthering the interests of the city in any way. He is best known as the proprietor, jointly with his wife, of the Turner Rest Home and Sanitarium, which they established in 1904. Prior to this they had been proprietors of the Victoria Sanitarium, and for three years previously they maintained public bath parlors, using in all these the mineral waters for which Colfax is famous. Doctor and Mrs. Turner went to Chicago, Illinois, in 1898 and there remained two years, returning to Colfax in 1900 and have since devoted most of their attention to their modern, well equipped and popular sanitarium, which has proven to be a boon to thousands. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 480.