The Turner family has been a part of Patagonia’s history for four generations. Over the years, marriages, deaths, divorces and changes of address have complicated the genealogy, but the descendants of the original family that settled in Patagonia like to get together every few years.
In September a Turner family reunion brought people from Oregon, Georgia, Texas, Wisconsin and California to Patagonia. They gathered for meals, memory-sharing, and catching up at the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Third Avenue, a place that has been an important landmark for many of the family.
The story of how these two families came to settle in Patagonia begins in the 1930s. Life was hard for small farmers—the stock market crashed, banks closed and drought took hold of the center of the country. The children in the Turner family, then living in Texas, wore hand-me-down clothes, picked cotton, and often went hungry. Word came from Al Turner’s father, who lived in Patagonia, that he needed help caring for his wife, and Cleo, one of their eleven children, was sent off on the train to make her way here in 1932. Not long after, the older brothers decided to pack up the rest of the family and came to live at the Turner ranch out on Harshaw Creek Road.
Most of the Turner children married and raised families—Margaret Turner married into the local Martin clan and had three children before her husband was killed when a truck exploded. One of those children is local rancher, Dave Martin. His son Tom and his granddaughter Gianna were at the reunion.
Cleo Turner married Delmar (Doc) Mock, Patagonia’s doctor who, with Cleo’s help, attended to the medical needs of the entire area. Their daughters and adopted son grew up first in an apartment behind Doc Mock’s office and then in the red house at the corner of Third Avenue and Duquesne across from the Adventist Church. Their daughter, Noni Mock Weigemann, did most of the planning for the reunion.
Steve Turner, who comes from another branch of the family, is an historian, and regaled his relatives with tales of the Turner clan that came to America from Ireland in the 18th century and ended up living, for the most part, in Texas. They were known for breeding horses. One of them, who got 400 acres of arid desert in a government land grant, discovered later that he was sitting on an oil field. The most illustrious member of the Turner family, Clyde “Bulldog” Turner, is in the National Football League’s Hall of Fame. He was premier center and linebacker for the Chicago Bears for 13 seasons.
One attribute that seems to be shared by many of the Turners is musical talent. No one has anything good to say about Al Turner, the father of those 11 children, except that he was an amazing mandolin player and had a lovely voice. His gift is sprinkled throughout the family, most of whom can sing and are talented string players.
An enlarged black and white photograph of this large family was the centerpiece at the reunion dinner. Nearly everyone there traced their lineage back to one of the children in that photo. After a delicious buffet meal on Saturday night, the 40 or so people divided into groups who each stood in front of the family portrait from the dust bowl and explained their relationship to a particular child in the photograph.
The family thread that ties all these people together, from 99-year old matriarch Cleo Mock to teenager Gianna Martin is complex but strong—and Patagonia is at the root of their connection. After dinner, most people drove up to the cemetery where so many of their kin are buried. It was getting dark when they returned to the church, to share music and recall other concerts and gatherings that have bound them together over the years.