Joseph Turner was born on May 21, 1844, in Marshall County, Indiana, to James Turner and Milly Bybee.  His father was a farmer who owned $11,200 of real estate and $1,340 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Tippecanoe, Indiana.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 4, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company F of the 74^th Indiana Infantry later that day. The regiment took part in the Battle of Perryville, the Battle of Stones River, the Battle of Chickamauga, the siege of Chattanooga, the Battle of Missionary Ridge, the Atlanta campaign, the March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign. He was wounded in the foot at Chickamauga, but he eventually recovered and rejoined his regiment. He mustered out in Washington, D.C., on June 9, 1865. According to one writer, he was “loved and respected by his comrades…never shirking from any duty that was assigned him.”

 

Turner returned to his parents’ household in Tippecanoe after the war, and by 1870, he was working as a farmer. He moved to Baxter Springs, Kansas, around 1872 before settling in Fort Worth, Texas, around 1877. He earned a living as a merchant. He died of diabetes in Fort Worth on June 1, 1899. As one writer reported, he was “conscious up to the minute of his death, his mind clear and rational. He died as a tired child goes to sleep, and a good life was ended.”

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