Vines Edmunds Turner, Assistant Quartermaster (Captain), 23rd North Carolina Regiment (N.C.T.)

Author's Note:  Vines Edmunds Turner was a first cousin of my great-great grandfather, Lysander Turner.

Vines Edmunds Turner, a son of Archibald Adams Turner (born May 23, 1810; died December 27, 1857) and Mary Anne Howze (dates of birth, death, and their marriage unknown) and a first cousin of Lysander Turner, was born on January 21, 1837. Graduating from the Baltimore Dental College in 1858, he practiced dentistry in Henderson, North Carolina until the outbreak of the War Between the States, when he enlisted in Company G of the 23^rd North Carolina Regiment, the “Granville Rifles,” at the age of twenty-four.  

Elected 3^rd Lieutenant on June 11, 1861, Vines was present with the Company until appointed Adjutant on or about May 10, 1862 and transferred to the Field and Staff of the Regiment.  On June 26, 1862, at the Battle of Mechanicsville, Virginia, his horse was killed, falling upon him and inflicting minor injury. Wounded in the leg at Gaines’ Mill (also called First Cold Harbor), Virginia on June 27, 1862, he returned to duty on or about August 1, 1862. On or about April 25, 1863, he was appointed Assistant Quartermaster (Captain) of the Regiment. On September 30, 1864, he was appointed Assistant Quartermaster of General Jubal A. Early’s Division and transferred.  By the end of the War, he was serving on the staff of General James A. Walker.

Following the War, in 1865, Vines resumed his practice of dentistry at Henderson, North Carolina. In 1866, he was present at a meeting intended to reorganize the State dental association, which was originally created in 1856.  In 1871, he moved to Raleigh. In 1875, when the dental association was ultimately reorganized, becoming the North Carolina Dental Society, he was elected First Vice President. In 1876 and again in 1888, he was elected president of this organization. In 1878, Vines was present at a meeting of the Society that appointed a committee which, he stated, was to “…secure such legislative enactment as might be beneficial to the profession and to the public;” he was appointed Chairman of this committee. When legislation was passed creating the North Carolina State Dental Examining Board in 1879, he was appointed to this board and elected Chairman, an office which he held for thirty-one years. Vines also became president of the Southern Dental Association in 1881, Vice President of the American Dental Congress in 1887, President of the National Dental Association from 1904 to 1906, President of the Jamestown Dental Convention in 1907, and President of the National Dental Association in 1908. In 1913, he was appointed as one of three members of the United States Navy Reserve Board.

Vines married Zena H. Lassiter (dates of birth, death, and their marriage unknown); no children were produced by this marriage. Later, he married Love Gales Root (dates of birth, death, and their marriage unknown) and they had three children: Charles Root Turner (born 1875, died June 11, 1947), Mary Archer Turner (born June 4, 1878; died October 16, 1967), and Henry Gray Turner (born 1883, date of death unknown).

Two written works are credited to Vines Turner. The first, “Twenty-third Regiment” (co-authored with Sergeant H.C. Wall), appeared in Histories of the Several Regiments and battalions from North Carolina in the Great War 1861-’65, which was edited by Walter Clark (Lieutenant Colonel, Seventieth Regiment, N.C.T.) and published in 1901. The second, “North Carolina State Dental Society and Dental Surgery in North Carolina,” appeared in Koch’s History of Dental Surgery, which was published in 1908 and reprinted, upon his death, by the North Carolina Dental Society. Vines Turner died on May 11, 1914 at 2:00 a.m.  He is buried at Raleigh, North Carolina.