Born in Duxbury in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Turner received a common-school education at Duxbury and Scituate. He was commissioned an adjutant in the Massachusetts State Militia in 1787. He was promoted to major in 1790, and held the rank of lieutenant colonel commandant 1798–1812.
He was appointed first postmaster of Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1800. He was in the Justice of the Peace. He served as member of the State house of representatives in 1803 and 1805–1808.
He successfully contested as a Democratic-Republican the election of William Baylies to the Eleventh Congress. He was reelected to the Twelfth Congress and served from June 28, 1809, to March 3, 1813. He served as chairman of the Committee on Accounts (Twelfth Congress). "...Charles Turner, member for the Plymouth district, and Chief-Justice of the Court of Sessions for that county, was seized by a crowd on the evening of August 3, [1812] and kicked through the town."[1]
He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Thirteenth Congress. He served in the State senate in 1816.
He was again a member of the State house of representatives in 1817, 1819, and 1823. He was appointed steward of the Marine Hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts. He served as delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1820.
He also engaged in agricultural pursuits.
Possibly the first non-Native American to climb Mount Katahdin in Maine, Turner was the first to record his climb. About the ascent he wrote: On Monday, August 13, 1804, at 8 o’clock A.M. we left our canoes at the head of boat waters, in a small clear stream of spring water, which came in different rivulets from the mountain, the principal of which (as we afterwards found) issued from a large gully near the top of the mountain. At 5 o'clock, P.M. we reached the summit of the mountain. Katahdin is the southernmost and highest of a collection of eight or ten mountains, extending from it north east and north west.
He died in Scituate, Massachusetts, May 16, 1839. He was interred in the burial ground of the First Parish of Norwell (formerly Scituate).
References
^Adams, Henry, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison, ISBN0-940450-35-6, p. 574.
