Carl Julian Turpin and Turpin, Oklahoma

My paternal great granduncle, Carl Julian Turpin, was a "railroad man." He, along with his wife Frances Jeannette Linton Turpin, traveled the world in the 1930s. Carl shook hands with President Calvin Coolidge.

I was around nine years old when my father told me that there was a town in the panhandle of Oklahoma named Turpin. Since my father was always teasing me, I did not believe him. "Call Mema. Ask her," he said. So I did and that is when I learned that, in fact, there was and still is a town in Beaver County, Oklahoma named Turpin.

Carl Julian Turpin was a son of Thomas James Turpin and Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin. He was born on 10 Aug 1871 in Quantico, Wicomico County, Maryland. He died 20 Nov 1942 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, OK.

Great granduncle Carl had a head for business and he was ambitious. He left the Eastern Shore of Maryland at an early age. Carl Julian Turpin became the general manager of the Beaver, Mead and Englewood Railroad (Source: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of History Places Inventory, Nomination Form for Turpin Grain Elevator, March 18, 1983) when, in 1918, two Hardtner, Kansas farmers, Jacob Achenbach and Ira B. Blackstock, requested his assistance. The Messrs. Achenbach and Blackstock had been asked by farmers in Beaver County, OK, and the surrounding areas to build a railroad through the Panhandle so that their wheat crops could be shipped to outlying markets. (Note the time period -- 1918 -- this was during World War I. Wheat prices were at an all time high -- $3.00 a bushel according to a 1918 Scribners magazine article -- and virgin land was being plowed up at a record rate. Only hindsight shows that this, in addition to a subsequent seemingly endless drought, was a contributing factor to Oklahoma's infamous Dust Bowl.) The farmers in the Oklahoma panhandle were no different from farmers other areas of the Great Plains. They too wanted in on the galloping wheat market.

Jacob Achenbach and Ira B. Blackstock knew how to build a railroad, but they needed someone to manage it. That is where Carl Julian Turpin came in. (Source: "Panhandlers," Time Magazine, July 13, 1931)

Carl J. Turpin had ample experience as a railroad man, his career beginning in 1888. (Source: "Carl J. Turpin, Savings and Loan Official Here, Is Dead," The Daily Oklahoman, November 20, 1942.)

Described as a "by the book" type of general manager, Carl Julian Turpin was a stern, well groomed man. (Source: Hofsommer, Donovan L., Katy Northwest: The Story of a Branch Line Railroad, page 190, [Pruett Publishing Company, boulder, CO, 975; reprinted by Indiana University Press, 1999.]) He worked without salary, but did receive stock in the line, from 1918 until 1926. The terminus where a seven mile right-of-way joined an additional twenty miles of rail was called "Turpin."

At its height, the Beaver, Mead and Englewood Railroad ran from Beaver, Oklahoma, to Eva, Oklahoma, with an extension and connection to the Santa Fe Railroad in Keyes, Oklahoma. The line connected with the Katy at Forgan, Oklahoma, and the Rock Island at Hooker, Oklahoma. The BM&E was eventually sold to M-K-T (Katy) Railroad Company in 1931 for $2,100,000 . . . a profit of about $2,000 a mile. (Source: "Panhandlers," Time Magazine, July 13, 1931)

In an interview with the Daily Oklahoman on March 7, 1931, Carl Julian Turpin said, "When I was a kid 2years old, but married, I used to want to work for a railroad which paid $50 a month and furnished its agents a two-story house on the line, rent, brooms, and matches free. Maybe I still could find something like that."

(Source: "Faith in Oklahoma Reaps Rich Rewards," The Daily Oklahoman, March 7, 1931)

(Note from Bleu: I contributed a version of the above blog to the entry for "Turpin, Oklahoma," in Wikipedia.)