TURNER, Jeremiah M.

Photo courtesy: Telegraph Herald

TURNER, Jeremiah M. (Dubuque, IA, Dec. 24, 1837--Lansing, IA, May 6, 1928) In A Raft Pilot's Log, by Capt. Walter A. Blair (1929), Capt. Turner was described as

       a close manager and a careful, skillful, cautious pilot. 
       He made good average time and delivered his rafts in excellent 
       condition when and where they were wanted...(he) proved his 
       merit by his work and quit the river with a competency, he did      
       not lose when he went ashore but increased it by successful 
       enterprise since. (1)

Turner personally knew Abraham Lincoln and was in attendance at the Wigwam in Chicago when Lincoln was nominated for president. He enjoyed the company of author Mark Twain who he considered a 'good humorist but a poor pilot.' Turner held a pilot's license good for navigation from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. During the CIVIL WAR, he performed valuable assistance to the Union Army by transporting troops. He also contributed to geological and scientific publications. (2)

J.M. Turner engaged in towing logs and lumber on the Upper Mississippi, between St. Paul and St. Louis. Written in the 1920s, Memories of a Raft Pilot by Capt. Turner, told of his life on the Mississippi during the later years of lumbering when rafts were towed down the Mississippi by steamboats. His river activities began in 1858 and continued until 1903. (3) During that time Turner was briefly in the LEAD MINING business after discovering around 1885 a vein north of Lansing. He formed a company with a state senator from Cedar Rapids and another local businessman and extracted "several carloads." (4)

In May, 1899 Turner established the first pearl button factory in Lansing. He expressed his concern at the time by the arrangement between the Iowa Department of Corrections and a rival firm in Illinois. He found it appalling that the State of Iowa would supply fifty convicts from the prison at Fort Madison to a competitor button manufacturer in Illinois for a term of five years at 55 cents per day. (5) Although rebuffed by Iowa officials, Turner continued his involvement in the factory well into his 80s. In 1926 the button company was doing $200,000 of business annually. In that year he was proclaimed the oldest person in Iowa. (6) The business was led by his grandson, Leo Hufschmidt, who had been raised by Jeremiah and his wife after his mother Julia died. When Mrs. Turner died in 1904, J.M. lived with Leo for the remainder of his life. (7)

In 1924, Capt. Turner proposed the building of a nine-foot waterway from Green Bay to McGregor by way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. He believed a it could be made and maintained at minimum cost. (8)

---

Source:

1. "Turner, Capt. Jeremiah M.," Online: http://iagenweb.org/boards/allamakee/biographies/index.cgi?read=200708

2. "Funeral for a River Pilot," Telegraph-Herald and Times-Journal, May 8, 1928, p. 7

3. Turner

4. "Captain Turner is 88 Years Old," Telegraph Herald, January 8, 1926, p. 5

5. "Fear Convict Button Labor," Dubuque Herald, November 8, 1898, p. 4

6. "Captain Turner is..."

7. Turner

8. Ibid.