IDENTIFYING AN 1891 TURPIN FAMILY PICTURE

The family of Thomas James Turpin and Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin identified as of 07 Jan 2010:


Seated, left to right: Carl Julian Turpin, Frances Linton Turpin, Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin holding Paul Lawry Turpin, son of Austin Caleb Turpin and Iva Gertrude Lawry Turpin, Ashby Turpin.


Standing, left to right: Austin Caleb Turpin, Gertrude Lawry Turpin, Victor Noir Turpin, Henrietta Elledge Turpin, William Upshur Turpin

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In 1996, CLT, a paternal grandson of Ashby Turpin and a great grandson of Ellmandia M. Kennerly Turpin and Thomas James Turpin, mailed copies of the above picture to known relatives of his generation, asking if anyone had information on the identification of the people in the picture. In his 1996 query, CLT indicated that the front row of people had been identified. The story is that the above picture was taken on the wedding day of Carl J. Turpin and Frances J. Linton in Holton or Concordia KS in December 1891. CLT is my father. He gave me a copy of the picture and also copies of the information he had gathered from Ella Turpin Person, his paternal aunt and a younger sister of CLT’s father, Milton Ashby Turpin.

After studying census reports and information gathered from the letters of Carl Julian Turpin and Frances Linton Turpin housed at the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, I am adding the following information for reasons to identify the back row in the above picture as they are identified this 7th day of January 2010. By using birth and death dates, my father did an excellent job of eliminating the obvious people, such as Albion Farrington Turpin who died in 1867 and Zenophine Turpin who passed away in 1879. Both Albion and Zenophine were children of Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin and Thomas James Turpin.

Who is the tall young man in the middle of the back row? The two youngest children of Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin and Thomas James Turpin were Victor Noir Turpin (1873-1927) and Walter Clifton Turpin (1875-1892) referred to as “Clif” in an 1888 letter from Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin to her son Austin Caleb Turpin.


On Victor’s 12 Sep 1918 WWI draft card, he is listed as “tall.” Victor would have been 18 in 1891. His younger brother Walter Clifton Turpin would have been 16. “Clif” could have still been in school. The 1 Mar 1895 Kansas State Census shows Victor living with his brother, Austin, and Austin’s wife, (Iva) Gertrude Lawry Turpin and their 4 year old son Paul and 2 year old daughter, Fay, in Holton, Jackson County, KS. It is a safe assumption that the tall young man in the middle of the back row is Victor Noir Turpin.



Who are the people standing to the left of Victor and behind Carl J. Turpin and Frances J. Linton Turpin? I am identifying these people as Austin Caleb Turpin and his wife (Iva) Gertrude Lawry.


Austin Caleb Turpin and (Iva) Gertrude Lawry Turpin were in frequent touch with Carl J. Turpin and Frances J. Linton Turpin. Gertrude and Frances were Kansas girls. They all remained close throughout their lives as evidenced by the bulk of the exchange of letters between the wives of Austin and Frances.


Look at the body language and study the faces of the people in the picture on the front page of this document. Instead of being posed in a room with a fake background, imagine this same group posed in a small boat on a lake. The boat would be listing to the left. There is a definite space between Ashby and his mother Ellmandia.


(Remember Ashby was involved in the homicide trial of Ellmandia’s older sister, Zenophine’s husband William Farrington by John Wesley Turpin, an uncle of Ashby’s through his father Thomas. Ashby’s parents, Ellmandia and Thomas, were first cousins through their mothers, Zipporah Goslee Turpin and Julia Anne Goslee Kennerly, who were sisters. Ashby left Quantico, Wicomico County, MD, shortly after the trial and went west. I can only imagine the emotions involved in that situation. To Ashby’s credit though, Ellmandia’s sister Zenophine never blamed Ashby even though during the trial, the defense alleged that if Ashby had not intervened by trying to knock the gun out of John Wesley Turpin’s hand, the gun would not have misfired. Ashby worked for William Farrington on his large plantation, Gethsemane, which had been in the Kennerly family for years. In her last will and testament, Zenophine willed to Ashby a crayon drawing of her late husband. Zenophine attended the wedding of Ashby and Mary Virginia Sparks in January 1900. In fact Zenophine died on their wedding day, after the festivities were over and Ashby and Mamie (Mary Virginia) had hopped a train for Iowa.) (Source: Salisbury Advertiser, Salisbury, MD., Saturday, January 13, 1900, front page.)

Something also to keep in mind is that Thomas James Turpin, the father of the Turpins pictured in this family grouping and the husband of Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin, their mother, had already ventured west once around 1850, when he was 16, traveling as far as the vicinity of St. Joseph, MO, as revealed in Thomas’s obituary published in the Baltimore American on 02 Dec 1906. So, Thomas’s sons heard stories about his time in the West, coupled with the whole nation’s surge toward the West during the second half of the 19th century.



There is also space between Victor and the lady to his right. William Upshur Turpin, another sibling, and his wife, Henrietta Elledge Turpin, I believe, are the couple standing in back of Ashby Turpin. The woman has her left hand on Ashby’s right shoulder and her right hand appears to be on the back of Ellmandia’s chair.



However, this woman could also be May Thomas Turpin, the eldest child of Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin and Thomas James Turpin. May, though, had married in April, 1888, Thomas B. Moore, a man thirty-six years her senior. In September, 1892, May gave birth to her and Thomas B. Moore’s only child, Emma Gertrude Moore, who passed away in her twenty-first year of life. While it is documented that May and her daughter, Emma, did travel west once in 1903 to visit her brother Victor and his first wife, Lola Silence Paddock Turpin, in Fort Worth, TX, (source: Fort Worth Star Telegram, 05 Jul 1903), May was also a school teacher in Quantico and Salisbury, MD. Another thing to consider in May’s favor is that she probably would have wanted to be at her brother’s wedding, accompanying her mother west.



I am leaning on the side of Henrietta Elledge Turpin, though, because she and William Upshur Turpin were in Iowa and it has been established all the men in this generation of the Turpin family worked for the railroads, except for Ashby. I get the impression, after reading letters from the Carl J. Turpin collection, that these families traveled frequently by train visiting each other. Henrietta Elledge and William Upshur Turpin married in 1887 in Hiatsville, KS, four years before this picture was taken. By 1890, the couple had moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa. Different census reports show William working for the Rock Island Railroad in various positions and his niece, Ella Turpin Person, wrote that, in 1896, William was also an executive with the Lehigh Sewer and Pipe Company. When Ashby Turpin and Mary Virginia Sparks Turpin married in 1900, they left for Fort Dodge, Iowa, on their wedding day, where William and Henrietta were living. Ashby and Mamie didn’t go to Malden, Massachusetts, which is where Austin and (Iva) Gertrude Lawry Turpin were living at the time of the 1900 US census, nor did they travel to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Victor Noir Turpin was living at that same time. They didn’t travel to be with Carl Julian Turpin and Frances Linton Turpin in Winfield, KS. Ashby and Mamie went to Fort Dodge, Iowa where William Upshur Turpin and Henrietta Elledge Turpin lived. That is where Ashby and Mamie’s first child, Milton Ashby Turpin, was born in November 1900. There might have been a closeness between Ashby and William since there was only 18 months’ difference in their ages. And this is a big assumption, but from reading the following excerpts that are included in this document, Henrietta apparently had trouble getting along with the youngest brothers and she perhaps felt closer to Ashby, hence the hand on the shoulder.　
　
Consider the following:



In an excerpt from a letter dated 19 Sep 1888 from Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin to her son Austin Caleb Turpin, Ellmandia writes the following about the relationship between Carl Julian Turpin and his brother William Upshur Turpin‘s wife, Henrietta Elledge Turpin:


"Carl does not seem to like Ettie. He has told me lotts [sic] but I always tell him never to notice anything or never to speak in any way unkindly. He said in his last (letter) she charged him 20 cents for sewing up a little slit in his shirt sleeve and again 10 cents for 2 buttons on. That is unkind. I do comment on her to him but say to him well never mind, he will soon be able to go somewhere else if he likes and this must stimulate him to study the harder. Ashby thinks it terrible Carl pays board. I do not yet there are things Willie could change privately if he wished."

Carl is known to have been in the west by 1889 as witnessed by a picture he had taken of himself in Thompson, Nebraska, in 1889. He apparently was living with William and Henrietta and going to school because Ellmandia says in the above excerpt that perhaps Carl’s dislike of Henrietta will encourage him to study harder so that he can eventually leave their house. 　

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And then much later, in an excerpt from a letter dated 20 Jan 1919 from (Iva) Gertrude Lawry Turpin to Frances Linton Turpin:

"I have just written to Will (William Upshur Turpin, an older brother of Austin Caleb Turpin). Ettie’s illness troubles me dreadfully. I cannot realize Ettie’s mind gone. Her mind always seemed the strongest part of her. Will says in his letter today that the Dr. in Des Moines has hopes of her recovery. The Fort Dodge Dr. had no hope. Upshur (the son of William Upshur Turpin and Henrietta Elledge Turpin) went through here (Chicago) last week on his way to see his Mother."

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Excerpt from a letter dated 11 Feb 1919 from Iva Gertrude Lawry Turpin, wife of Austin Caleb Turpin, to Frances Linton Turpin, the wife of Carl Julian Turpin:

"Curt Ellidge [sic] (Ettie‘s brother) [Note: Ettie is Henrietta Elledge Turpin, the wife of William Upshur Turpin. William is the brother of Austin Caleb Turpin. data] came up for the funeral. He arrived Monday and returned Thu. Evening. We went over Tue. Night. When we got up Wed. morning, we found that Upshur had the berth across the isle [sic] from us. The flowers were beautiful at the funeral; there were between 3 and 4 hundred dollars worth. Ettie did not look natural at all. I would never have known it was Ettie. She was quite a bit thiner [sic]. Will (William Upshur Turpin, brother of Austin Caleb Turpin) lookes [sic] very bad. 　
　
He is thin and his color is very bad. I suppose he has written you that he and Up are in Hot Springs. Nettie said Will’s stomach has been very bad for several months. While Ettie was ill it was a great worry to her. She did not regain her mind before she died.
Upshur is looking fine. I am quite in love with him. I did not like him as a little boy at all, but I like him better every time I see him since he is grown. Will is thinking of having Sister (Note: Sister is May Thomas Turpin Moore, the older sister of William Upshur, Austin Caleb, Ashby, and Victor Noir Turpin. data) come out and live with him. He says if she is not able to do the work, he will hire a housekeeper."

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And finally in an excerpt from a letter dated 11 Feb 1919 from Iva Gertrude Lawry Turpin to Frances Linton Turpin, the wife of Carl Julian Turpin, she mentions that she and Austin had hoped to see Carl and Frances in Iowa the week before, indicating that Carl and Frances did not go to the funeral of Henrietta Elledge Turpin:

9506 Longwood Drive
Feb. 11, 1919

Dear Frances,
We rather expected to see you and Carl at Fort Dodge last week. The girls told me to be sure and bring you both home with us.
　

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Note from Bleu:

Some might say that in the end, it doesn’t really matter if the people in this picture are ever identified, yet it does matter. These people were once alive, raising families, working, eating, and traveling the earth as we are now and we are connected to them. They were the family that came before us. Their family dynamics influenced our present day families’ dynamics. If, for no other reason, that is why knowing where one comes from is important -- to understand why things are the way they are now. It is also important to remember that when we are born influences who we are. The above generation of Turpin men were involved with railroads, mining, and farming. Their grandsons and great nephews were involved in the aeronautical industry. Timing is everything.