William Mason Turner Papers (Ms.77.1)

Biographical note

A native Virginian, William Mason Turner attended Brown University, from which he received a Ph.B. degree in 1855. Following Brown, Turner enrolled in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for a three year course of study. After completing his studies in medicine, Turner made a tour of Europe and the Middle East with a group of fellow doctors. His travel journal, entitled El-Khuds, the Holy; Or, Glimpses in the Orient, was published in Philadelphia in 1861. He subsequently established his medical practice in Petersburg, Virginia, where he married Hannah Adelie Ford.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Turner joined the Confederate Army as a surgeon. In September that year, he was on the staff of the General Hospital at C.S. Fort Nelson in Norfolk, Virginia. He was later assigned to the Confederate Navy in Richmond. By 1863, he was serving aboard the C.S.S. Chicora, a Confederate gunboat stationed at Charleston, South Carolina. However, he was eventually captured and spent the last months of the war in a prisoner of war camp.

After his parole, he resumed the practice of medicine in Philadelphia, where he became a regular contributor of poetry, prose, and medical literature to local publications, including Saturday Night. He also authored several dime novels for the Beadle & Adams publishing house. Turner died in 1877 at the age of forty-two.