Pease-Turner, Mrs. Mary C.

PEASE, TURNER, COOK, PIERSON, ENGLE, FISH, WESTFALL, POLING

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 10/23/2009 at 07:12:05

Pease-Turner, Mrs. Mary C.

In the following lines the biographer sets forth succinctly and, we hope correctly, the leading facts and characteristics of one of Jasper County's estimable ladies, who, since taking up her residence here, has formed a wide acquaintance with its best people, and all speak of her as one whose acts have ever been above idle cavil and singularly free of aught that the world terms unladylike and whose career has been governed throughout by correct and right motives.

Mrs. Mary C. Pease-Turner, who owns the beautiful and well-kept Turner homestead in Poweshiek Township, known as the Hawthorne Farm, is the widow of C. C. Turner. She came to the vicinity where she now resides in 1856, with her parents, Andrew and Joanna M. (Cook) Pease, the mother being the daughter of Daniel and Catherine (Pierson) Cook. This family moved here from near Mansfield, Richland County, Ohio, where the subject was born September 28, 1832 and therefore she is now, in the line of the poet, "in the mellow evening twilight of her age." Her father was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, October 2, 1804, the son of Andrew and Mary (Engle) Pease. Catherine Pierson, the maternal grandmother of the subject, was the daughter of John Pierson, of New Jersey, who served through the Revolutionary War from 1776 to 1784, and he was for six months one of Washington's lifeguards. Andrew Pease first served in the French and Indian War. He was a participant in Colonel Crawford's expedition to Upper Sandusky, and, with Doctor Knight and a few others, made their escape, the Colonel and the rest of his band being massacred and tortured to death. The great-grandfather Pease came to this country from Germany and located first near Baltimore, Maryland, then lived in Washington County, Pennsylvania, building the first grist mill in that county. The subject's mother, Joanna M. Cook, was the daughter of Daniel and Catherine (Pierson) Cook, as before indicated; Daniel Cook was a soldier in the War of 1812, having enlisted from Washington County, Pennsylvania. He later became a resident of Richland County, Ohio, where he was a leader in public affairs, being a man of strong convictions and well informed. His home was a station on the Underground Railroad for the escape of Negro slaves from their masters. Mrs. Turner remembers well an incident when she was eight years of age, of hearing Gen. William Henry Harrison make a speech in Mansfield, Ohio, she standing in a buggy. During his speech to the crowd he described fully the death of Tecumseh, the great Indian chief at the battle of the Thames. This family of Cooks descended from the famous Francis Cook, who, with his son, came to Massachusetts as a member of the notable Mayflower band, his wife and the rest of the children following the next year on the ship Ann.

The immediate subject is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, being able to trace her ancestry to the War for Independence through four lines, while her children trace back to that event through five lines, adding to her own lineage that of their father, C. C. Turner. This is indeed a record of which anyone might well be proud.

Mrs. Turner, of this review, was educated at Mansfield, Ohio, and she taught school in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and after coming to Jasper County, Iowa, she taught the first school in district No. 4, Poweshiek Township. She was a woman of education, having kept abreast of the times and is familiar with the world's best literature, having ever kept her home well supplied with good reading matter, still a student of current events at the age of eighty, a lady of intelligence and culture, and her home is a pleasant place for her many friends to gather. She has been active and influential in the moral and religious as well as educational life of this locality.

Mrs. Turner has the following brothers and sisters: Frank L. Pease, who came to Jasper County in 1868, was a veteran of the Civil war, having served in an Ohio regiment; Mary C., of this review, is the second in order of birth; Willis M. has remained single and lives at Colfax, Iowa; Edith M., who is now deceased, married Ed. G. Fish, who died in California; Hugh A. lives at Colfax; he is a veteran of the Civil War, having served in the Fortieth Iowa Volunteer Infantry; Marion W., of Colfax, is also a veteran of the Civil War, having served in an Iowa regiment. At one time during that struggle the father, husband and three brothers of the subject were at the front.

The following children were born to Mr. and Mrs. C. C. Turner: Eva died young; Hugh Pease died in 1882, at the age of sixteen years; he was a most manly and promising boy, whose loss was a great blow to his parents; Edward S. is farming on the home place and living with his mother; he has been very successful as a general farmer and breeder of shorthorn cattle. He has made a great reputation for Hawthorne Farm, owing to the high grade of his livestock, for which he always finds a very ready sale owing to their superior quality. He married Minnie Westfall, daughter of Lee C. Westfall and wife, the father a veteran of the Civil War who came to Jasper County in 1854 and he married Jane Poling in July 1866. She was born in Van Buren County, Iowa, in 1847. Lee C. Westfall is now clerk of Poweshiek Township and he has for many years filled local offices and is an influential and highly respected citizen here.

Three children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Turner, Nellie and Mary, both attending school; Harold Westfall, the oldest, died in infancy. The Turner family has been one of the most prominent and highly honored of Jasper County's residents from the pioneer days to the present time. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 806.