Jonathan Baldwin Turner

Jonathan Baldwin Turner (December 7, 1805 – January 10, 1899) Born in Templeton, Massachusetts, Turner was a classical scholar, botanist, dedicated Christian, and political activist. He was perhaps the leading voice in the social movement of the 1850s that produced the land grant universities that pioneered public higher education in the United States. Turner was especially involved in establishing the University of Illinois.

Turner was a student of classical literature at Yale University and an aspiring missionary who, upon graduating in 1833, set out to the wilds of Illinois. In 1833, Turner became a professor at the newly organized Illinois College at Jacksonville, Illinois, where Turner encountered Pottawatomie Indians, and witnessed terrible outbreaks of cholera. At Jacksonville, Turner soon found himself involved in the question of slavery, becoming the editor of a Jacksonville abolitionist paper, an assistant with the Underground Railroad, and, in the classroom, a vocal opponent of slavery.

While a professor at Illinois College, Turner began to search for a plant that might serve as a hedge to help divide and cultivate expanses of open prairie. In the later 1830s Turner selected the Maclura pomifera (the Osage orange) as an ideal plant for this purpose, and patented a machine for preparing the soil and planting these seeds. Turner advertised and sold Osage Orange seeds, which were widely used as hedges before the development of barbed wire between 1867 and 1874.

His religious views the subject of an investigation by the Illinois Presbyterian Synod, and his abolitionism a subject of growing controversy, Turner in 1848 resigned from his teaching post as chair of belles lettres and literature at Illinois College. After his departure, Turner expanded his agricultural research and created the Illinois Industrial League to advocate for a publicly funded system to provide "industrial" education, suited for the needs of the working ("industrial") classes.

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