Ferdinand Turner "Turner" McLain (1841-1910)

MCLAIN

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 2/20/2017 at 16:24:02

From Nevada Representative November 11, 1910 (front page)

OBITUARY

DEATH OF TURNER McLAIN

Prominent Ames Citizen Victim of Apoplexy

F. T. McLain, generally spoken of as "Turner" McLain, died Wednesday morning at his home in Ames, following a stroke of apoplexy experienced on the previous forenoon. His last active performance of any duty was his voting on Tuesday. Asked in the morning if he had voted, he aid he was not feeling well enough; but he accepted an invitation to ride to the polls, arriving there felt so badly that the had to have help in preparing his ballot, voted it, rode home and was almost immediately thereafter overcome with apoplexy, from which he died within twenty-four hours.

The death of Turner McLain is a shock to the people of the county. He was about seventy years of age but had generally enjoyed excellent health and was still a vigorous man. He was for many years one of the most successful farmers of the county, and for nearly twenty years he had been one of the leading citizens of Ames. During this time he had been absent much on a ranche he owned in northwestern Nebraska; but he was actively identified with what was going on of interest to his community, and always he was a man universally honored and esteemed.

Mr. McLain was a native of Bedford county Pennsylvania, where he was born about 1840. He was a son of William McLain, and with his father's family he moved as a child to Wyandotte county, Ohio, thence to Ogle county, Illinois, and finally,, in the latter '50s, to Story county, Iowa, where he ever after resided. His father settled in Milford township, a little west of the center, and thence in 1862 he enlisted in the war for the Union, becoming a member of Company G, 14th Iowa Infantry, with which company he served for three years and three months, coming out of the service as sergeant. After the war he married and located near the parental homestead in Milford. He developed there one of the finest farms in the county, which he sold to M. W. Montgomery, when the Illinoisans began to come out here again. Mr. McLain was three times married and had a family of seven children. He was a member of the numerous McLain tribe that came here before the war, and he had about the county many relatives as well as innumerable friends. His funeral will be conducted Sunday at Ames.