L. J. Turner

History of Texas Together with a Biographical History of
Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee, & Burleson Counties

Dr. L. J. Turner, physician and surgeon of Rockdale, Milam county, is a native of Spartanburg district, South Carolina, where he was born April 21, 1839. His parents were also natives of South Carolina, his father, Peyton Turner, having been born in Spartanburg district, in 1817, and his mother, whose maiden name was Lucinda Grimes, in Newberry district, in 1823. The parents were married in their native State, and resided there until 1856, when they emigrated to Texas, settling in Bell county. In that county, their children, eight in number, were principally reared.

The second of these, Losson John, the subject of this notice, received his literary education at Spartanburg, South Carolina, and returning to that place in 1859 read medicine with an old friend of his father's, Dr. Rowland, and later entered the medical college at Charleston, where he had taken one course of lectures when the war opened. He entered the Confederate army in 1861, enlisting in Company I, Ninth South Carolina Infantry. He served in this command in the capacity of Orderly Sergeant, First Lieutenant and Captain, commanding the company for nearly two years, when he resigned and joined Company A, Eighth Texas (Terry's Texas rangers), with which he served till the close of the war. He took part in most of the engagements that were fought on Virginia and Maryland soil during his connection with the army operating in that locality, and when he was placed with the army in the West he was in all of the Georgia campaign and with Hood on his return into Tennessee, taking part in all the battles in which his command participated in Tennessee and Georgia. At the close of the war he resumed his medical studies and graduated at the Georgia Medical College, at Augusta, in 1867.

Returning to Texas, he located at Cameron, Milam county, where he immediately took up the practice of his profession. He had been at that place but a short time when, on account of the death of Dr. Wiley, of the San Gabriel and Little River country, he was called to that locality, and served the people there until his recent removal to Rockdale.

In 1869 Dr. Turner married Miss Georgie Randle, of Washington county, Texas, a daughter of William Randle, an old Texan, mention of whom will be found in the sketch of John T. Randle, which appears elsewhere in this volume. By this marriage the Doctor had two sons, Ira H. and Bailie P. The wife and mother died in 1878. The Doctor subsequently married Miss Lulie Rasberry, of Milam county, a daughter of Josephus and Ella Rasberry, natives of Tennessee and Mississippi respectively, who moved to Texas about 1885, Mrs. Turner being a native of Mississippi. One child has been the issue of this marriage—Eugene Edgar.

While the medical profession has always numbered Dr. Turner as one of its most active members, he has also been identified with the farming community, and has taken great interest in the agricultural affairs of the locality where he has resided. Including his own and what is under his control, he has between 1,500 and 2,000 acres of land in this and other counties of this State, a large part of which is under cultivation. It is a physician, however, that the Doctor is best known, and it is as a physician that he has done the work for which he will be longest remembered. He has given to the practice of medicine twenty-five years of the best part of his life, and during this time has done a vast amount of good for his fellow-men. In recent years he has retired somewhat from active practice, but still responds to calls when made by friends, and to all calls where he believes his services are really needed. He has necessarily done a great deal of charity practice, but it has been none the less faithfully done.

History of Texas Together with a Biographical History of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee, & Burleson Counties. Chicago, Lewis Publishing Company, 1893. pp. 405-407.