Frederick Jackson Turner
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- For other people of this same name, see Frederick Jackson and Frederick Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for The Significance of the Frontier in American History.
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[edit] Early life, education, and career
Born in Portage, Wisconsin, the son of Andrew Jackson Turner and Mary Olivia Hanford Turner, Frederick Jackson Turner graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1884, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He gained his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 with a thesis on the Wisconsin fur trade. As a professor of history at Wisconsin (1890–1910) and Harvard (1910–1922), Turner trained scores of disciples who in turn dominated American history programs throughout the country. His emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. His model of sectionalism as a composite of social forces, such as ethnicity and land ownership, gave historians the tools to use social history as the foundation of all social, economic and political developments in American history. At the American Historical Association, he collaborated with J. Franklin Jameson on major projects.
[edit] Turner's Frontier Thesis
Turner is remembered for his "Frontier Thesis", which he first published July 12, 1893, in a paper read in Chicago to the American Historical Association during the Chicago World's Fair. In it, he stated that the spirit and success of the United States is directly tied to the country's westward expansion. According to Turner, the forging of the unique and rugged American identity occurred at the juncture between the civilization of settlement and the savagery of wilderness. This produced a new type of citizen - one with the power to tame the wild and one upon whom the wild had conferred strength and individuality.[1]
[edit] Works
His essays are collected in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1933. Turner's sectionalism thesis had almost as much influence among historians as his frontier thesis. He argued that different ethno-cultural groups had distinct settlement patterns, and this revealed itself in politics, economics and society.
[edit] Marriage, family, and death
Frederick Jackson Turner married Caroline Mae Sherwood in Chicago in November 1889. They had three children: Dorothy Kinsley Turner (later Main), who lived to give them grandchildren; Jackson Allen Turner, who died in October 1899 and Mae Sherwood Turner, who died in February 1899. One of Main's grandchildren was historian Jackson Turner Main (1917–2003), a scholar of Revolutionary America.
Frederick Jackson Turner died in 1932 in California where he had been a research associate at the Huntington Library.[2]
[edit] Primary sources
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," address before the American Historical Association, Chicago, 1893.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson.. "Dominant Forces in Western Life". The Atlantic Monthly 79 (474): 433–4432934-0079-51.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. Edwards, Everett E. (comp.) The early writings of Frederick Jackson Turner, with a list of all his works. Compiled by Everett E. Edwards. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 at Project Gutenberg
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. ed. "Correspondence of the French ministers to the United States, 1791-1797" in American Historical Association. Annual report ... for the year 1903. Washington, 1904.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Is Sectionalism in America Dying Away?" (1908). American Journal of Sociology, 13: 661-75.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Social Forces in American History," presidential address before the American Historical Association American Historical Review, 16: 217-33.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, 1921. Pulitzer prize winner.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "The significance of the section in American history." Wisconsin Magazine Of History, vol. 8, no. 3 (Mar 1925) pp. 255-280.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of Sections in American History. New York: Holt, 1932.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Dear Lady": the letters of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alice Forbes Perkins Hooper, 1910-1932. Edited by Ray Allen Billington. Huntington Library, 1970.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. "Turner's Autobiographic Letter." Wisconsin Magazine Of History, vol. 19, no. 1 (Sep 1935) pp. 91-102.
- Turner, Frederick Jackson. America's Great Frontiers and Sections: Frederick Jackson Turner's Unpublished Essays edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs. University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
[edit] Secondary sources
- Bogue, Allan G., Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, ISBN 0-08061-3039-3
- Burkhart, J. A. "The Turner Thesis: A Historian's Controversy." Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 31, no. 1 (Sep 1947), pp. 70-83.
- Faragher, John Mack (ed.) Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and other essays. 1999.
[edit] References
- ^ "The Old Frontiers" by Alan Taylor, The New Republic, May 7, 2008
- ^ Bogue, Allan G., Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, ISBN 0-08061-3039-3
[edit] External links
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Frederick Jackson Turner |
- The Frontier in American History Turner's 1921 collection of essays on the West including the full text of his 1893 paper. From American Studies at the University of Virginia
- A biography of Frederick Jackson Turner
- Another biography
- Some more links
- Wisconsin Electronic Reader.
- Works by Frederick Jackson Turner at Project Gutenberg
