History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

1344

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN

AARON BEAMAN TURNER. In the venerable and honored citizen who
died at his home in Grand Rapids in 1903, at the age of eighty-one, western Michigan possessed not only one of its pioneer residents, but a man
who represented in his long career the prominent social and civic elements which made this community distinctive from its growth out of the
wilderness to a modern city. He is best remembered as a journalist,
and for many years was an editor and the founder of the Grand Rapids
Eagle. He was one of the originators of the Republican party, and had
the distinction of serving as clerk of the first city council at Grand Rapids.
Aaron Beaman Turner was born in Plattsburg, New York, August
27, 1822. His father was Isaac Turner, born in Clinton county, New
York, where he was reared and married, and in I836 came west to Michigan accompanied by his family. He followed the Great Lakes as far
as Detroit, and there took his household goods and his wife and children
in a wagon and drove across the swamps and through the woods to Grand
Rapids. Grand Rapids was then only a village, and a small collection of
pioneer homes was the only thing to distinguish it from the wilderness
which closed it in on all sides. Isaac Turner had learned the trade of
mill-wright in his younger days, and for a number of years after locating
in western Michigan he was employed in the building of many flour
mills and grist mills throughout the country around Grand Rapids, and
thus assisted in the erection of some of the first manufacturing institutions in that part of the state. At Grand Rapids he had a prominent
place in affairs, and was a member of the first board of aldermen. His
home was on the west side, and there was no bridge across Grand river
for some years, so that all citizens in passing from one to the other side
of the city had to use canoes. Isaac Turner died at the age of seventyeight years. He married Eunice Bullis, who was born at Plattsburg,
New York, and lived to be about eighty years of age. They were the
parents of four daughters and three sons: Aaron B., Alzina M., Lydia
H., Clara B., Theresa N., Willard D. and Chester. By a second marriage he was the father of one son, Isaac.
The late Aaron B. Turner was seventeen years old when the family came west to Grand Rapids. He made the best of his limited opportunities to acquire an education, and in 1837 began learning the printer's
trade in the office of the Grand River Times, which was the first newspaper published in Grand Rapids, and one of the first in all western
Michigan. He acquired a thorough proficiency in the art of printing, and
was almost a natural newspaper man, so that he always occupied a congenial field in newspaper work. In I844 he bought an old-fashioned hand
press, and sufficient type and other material to enable him to set up a
small print shop. From that little office in Grand Rapids on Christmas
day of 1844 was issued the first number of the Grand Rapids Eagle, and
no history of Grand Rapids journalism would be complete without some
account of this paper and of its veteran editor. In I856 Mr. Turner
brought out the first daily paper published in Grand Rapids, at that
time the only means of illumination in the homes and in the offices of
Grand Rapids was by the tallow candle, and practically all the work on
the Daily Eagle, from typesetting to presswork, was performed by this
dim and wavering light. In I864 the old office was destroyed by fire, but
Mr. Turner soon had it in running order again, and his paper was an
exception to the general rule of newspaper mortality in Michigan. Up
to 1852 his papers championed the Whig party, and at that date, the
old Whig organization having become decadent, he was one of the first
editors to make public call for the formation of a new and vigorous party
which might uphold and put into operation the new principles of political life which were already recognized and which only required organ