1925 Biography - Clarence B. Turner

Clarence Blanchard Turner, supervisor of city schools at Baton Rouge, has spent over ten years in educational work in his native state. He was born at Fort Necessity, in Franklin Parish, September 28, 1890. The Turner ancestors were of French Huguenot stock, and their first American settlement was in the Carolinas. The grandfather was Thomas Turner, a native of Pennsylvania, who when a young man came to Louisiana, practiced as a physician and surgeon in the Confederate army and lived out his life at Fort Necessity. He married Mary Whatley, who was born in that section of Louisiana and is still living there. Their son, Thomas C. Turner, was born at Fort Necessity in 1867, was a farmer in that locality, and died there January 8, 1908. He was serving as a member of the police jury when he died. He was a democrat, and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Woodmen of the World. His wife was Florence Rose Desha, who was born at Fort Necessity in 1869, and still occupies the homestead farm there. Of her six children Clarence B. is the oldest; Maude is the wife of Albert J. Reynolds, a physician and surgeon at Fort Necessity; Nina married Nuttall Dailey, a farmer at Extension, Louisiana; Paul and Charles are farmers at Fort Necessity; and Florence is a teacher of Latin in the high school at Pineville, Louisiana.

Clarence Blanchard Turner attended public schools at Fort Necessity, graduated from the Winnsboro High School in 1907, and then entered the preparatory department of Louisiana State University. In 1908 he was enrolled in the university proper, and, taking the classical course, graduated with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. He served as senior captain of the Corp Cadets of the university in 1912 and became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. After graduating he remained a year in post-graduate study, being awarded his Master of Arts degree in 1913. During that year he was an assistant in the department of mathematics at the university.

Mr. Turner was principal of the high school at Vidalie, Louisiana, from 1913 to 1916, was principal of the Glenmora High School in Rapides Parish from 1916 to 1919, and from 1919 to 1923 was assistant superintendent and supervisor of schools in Rapides Parish. In 1923 he returned to Baton Rouge supervisor of city schools, having eleven schools, one hundred and ten teachers and a scholarship enrollment of thirty-six hundred. His offices are in the Court House.

Mr. Turner is a democrat, a member of the Episcopal Church, and is affiliated with Concordia Lodge No. 303 of the Masonic Order at Vidalie, and belongs to the Kiwanis Club at Baton Rouge. He married, September 9. 1913, Miss Vivian Blackman, at Alexandria, Louisiana, the home of her parents, David H. and Hattie (Wells) Blackman, her father being a planter. Mrs. Turner graduated from the Louisiana State Normal School at Natchitoches, Louisiana, with the class of 1912, and was a high school teacher for three years before her marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Turner have two daughters: Gwendolyn and Florence. Mrs. Turner is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, pages 200-201.