AN ANALYSIS OF ANOTHER TURPIN PHOTOGRAPH

My dad gave me this picture a couple of years ago. On the back of the picture the caption says that Grandpa (Thomas James Turpin) is in the picture and that it was taken with the Smith neighbors. The caption mentions that the picture is for Uncle Carl (Julian Turpin) and it’s signed “Gertrude.”

The name “Gertrude” once led my father and me to believe that it had been taken in Kansas. We thought maybe it had been taken during Thomas’s visit to his son Ashby’s farm in Cowley County, KS, in September, 1906. Recently, I took out the picture again to study. Ashby’s and Mary Virginia Sparks Turpin’s daughter, (Flora) Gertrude was born in 1916, 10 years after the death of her grandfather, Thomas James Turpin, so she could not have been the Gertrude who wrote the note on the back of the picture.

HOWEVER, Ashby’s older sister, May Thomas Turpin Moore, with whom sisters Mary Virginia Sparks Turpin and Blanche Anna Sparks Rivenbark lived, had one child with her husband, Thomas B. Moore. (Emma) Gertrude Moore was born 26 Sep 1892 and she died 22 Sep 1913, just before her 21st birthday. May’s daughter never married.

The picture was taken between 1900 and Thomas’s death in 1906. In 1900, Ashby and Mamie were living in Fort Dodge, IA, where their first child, Milton Ashby Turpin, was born. A search of the 1905 Kansas State Census, the year before Thomas visited Ashby and Mamie, shows that Ashby and Mamie lived in Pleasant Valley Township, Cowley County, Kansas. However, in studying the people that lived around Ashby and Mamie in that 1905 Kansas state census, no Smiths are to be found.

In June 1900, in Dwelling #706, Salisbury, Maryland, lived May and her family, along with Mary Virginia Sparks Turpin’s sister, Blanche. May is listed as a school teacher and with them live, in addition to Blanche, (Mamie had already married Ashby in Jan. of that same year), 12 other people listed as boarders.

Two dwellings away, Dwelling #708, live the Smith family: husband E. Smith, age 37; wife Lillian Smith, age 33; daughter Margaret, 3; E. Smith’s brother, William G. Smith, age 41; and E. Smith’s mother, Margaret A. Smith, age 66.

The 1900 US Census, taken in June 1900, shows Thomas James Turpin and Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin living in Dwelling 763 in Salisbury, MD. They had moved from Quantico to Salisbury, according to an article published in the Salisbury Advertiser on 13 Jan 1900:

“Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Turpin have removed from Quantico to Salisbury and are now comfortably situated in their home on Bush street, which they purchased recently from Mr. Frank Mitchell.”

(As a side note, Bush Street no longer exists as it did in 1900. I asked when I was at the Nabb Research Center in Salisbury in October, 2009, and I was told that when U.S. Highway 50 came through, a lot of houses were torn down and streets renamed. Salisbury was changed by U.S. Highway 50. However, it did allow the town to grow and attract more business.)

So back to the original question: where was this picture taken? I believe it was taken in Salisbury, Maryland sometime between 1900 and 1906. The hairstyles of the woman sitting next to Thomas and the young women sitting in front of him indicate the early 1900s. www.fashion-era.com indicates that the pompadour was fashionable during that time period as were large hats.

Also, in looking at Thomas in this picture, he appears that he has more weight than in the picture that was taken at the 101 Ranch at Bliss, OK, two months before his death. (The small photo on the left of the group picture shown above was cropped from the photo being analyzed in this blog posting; the small photo on the right of the group picture shown above was cropped from a positively identified picture taken in September 16, 1906, of Thomas James Turpin at the 101 Ranch in Bliss, Oklahoma.)

My paternal great great grandfather, Thomas, was (Emma) Gertrude Moore’s maternal grandfather and Carl Julian Turpin was her maternal uncle. The 1910 census shows Ellmandia Kennerly Turpin, Thomas’s wife and my paternal great great grandmother, living with her daughter May, May’s daughter (Emma) Gertrude, and some boarders.

My theory is that once Ellmandia passed away in 1911, May and her daughter Gertrude probably went through pictures and things and distributed them to family members. On the back of the picture is written “for Uncle Carl from Gertrude.” Then when Uncle Carl (Julian Turpin) passed away, his wife Frances probably once again distributed pictures and the picture went to Ashby since he was still alive when Uncle Carl died, or even to my paternal grandfather (Milton Ashby) since he and his family were living in Oklahoma City when Uncle Carl (Julian Turpin) passed away.

I don’t know who the young women are sitting in front of Thomas, and, in fact, the only woman I can feel fairly safe in identifying is the oldest woman in the picture. I believe her to be Margaret A. Smith, age 66, the mother of E. Smith whose porch on which this picture was taken. The other gentleman in the picture is either E. Smith or his brother William. But this is based on the assumption that the entire Smith family is sitting on that porch with Thomas.

I even wonder if one of the young women sitting in front of Thomas is, in fact, (Emma) Gertrude Moore, May’s daughter. I wonder this because on the back of the picture is written “for Uncle Carl from Gertrude.” She wouldn’t need to identify herself because Uncle Carl would know what she looked like. The youngest woman on that front row appears to be the dark haired girl second from the left. But, even at that, (Emma) Gertrude Moore was 14 when her grandfather, Thomas James Turpin, died, so even though, people did look older sooner back then, I don’t know if this is a face of a 12 or 13 year old girl in the early 1900s.

I always hope that someday new information or positively identified photographs will turn up.

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.)