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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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136 History University of Illinois due to his activity against the abuses of corporations that the (Qlinois senate failed1 to confirm Turner's nomination as trustee of the Illinois hospital for the insane in 1874 and his progressive career on that board was ended. There is, in an article by F. G. Cary, president of Farmers college, Ohio, a notable account of a visit to Turner. "The Professor, ,, wrote Cary, "lives independently, thinks independently, and is a true philanthropist with an invincible repugnance to sectaries, creeds, and dogmatisms in religion, literature and politics. He is a stern supporter of religion, the state and education in all their essential, purifying and exalting principles and excellencies; * * * Having spent most of his life in teaching, he is one of the first educators. He is pomologist, horticulturist, and farmer, as well as educator and religious teacher; and judging from what we were permitted to see, adorns every position he occupies. As a horticulturist, his fruits, strawberries, and flowers are unsurpassed.'' After comment upon his hedges and fruits, he continued: "He also depends much upon trenching and underdraining, for the successful rearing of fruits especially. This gives equability of moisture that cannot otherwise be secured. "Even the pieplant will yield fourfold more by this treatment than by ordinary culture. From four rows four hundred feet long, thus cultivated, the Professor gathered the enormous amount of eight tons the past season." "The Professor has invented a continuous drain-tile made of cement that he constructs as he goes, forming it upon a round stick, which, as fast as it sets he withdraws. The cost, he says, is but one cent per foot." 12 "When Turner went to Washington in 1862 to nurse his son Charles who had enlisted in the 68th regiment of Illinois volunteers and had fallen ill of typhoid, he became a warm friend of President Lincoln. In a letter to his wife of September 19, 1862, Turner wrote: "He (Lincoln) also told me that his only instruction in the English language he had from me, through the Green brothers of Tellula, Illinois, while they were students of Illinois College "The Cmcmnatua for 1858.
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