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V.E. Turner
(1837 - 1914)
Home State: North Carolina
Command Billet: Regimental Adjutant
Branch of Service: Infantry
Before Sharpsburg
In 1860 he was 24 years old and lived with his widowed mother Mary and siblings in D.H. Christie's household in Henderson, Granville County, NC. He was commissioned 3rd Lieutenant (Brevet 2nd Lieutenant) of Company G, 13th North Carolina Infantry on 11 June 1861; they were redesignated the 23rd Infantry in November 1861. He was promoted to First Lieutenant and Adjutant on 16 April (or 12 May) 1862. He was slightly wounded in the leg at Gaines' Mill (Cold Harbor), VA on 27 June 1862.
On the Campaign
He was with the regiment on the Maryland Campaign. At Fox's Gap on South Mountain on 14 September 1862 Colonel Christie sent him to General Garland for assistance. Garland down, he found Colonel McRae, then in command of the brigade, but there was no help to be had. He got back to his regiment in time to join them in "precipitous" retreat down the mountain. Three days later he was with the very few remaining men of the regiment in action at Sharpsburg in the vicinity of the Sunken Road.
The rest of the War
He was promoted to Captain and Assistant Quartermaster on 25 April (or 26 January) 1863, and was detailed or transferred as Division Quartermaster to Early's Division on 30 September 1864.
After the War
In 1870 he was a dentist in Henderson, NC, living with his mother. By 1880 he was a dentist in Raleigh, NC.
References & notes
His service from the Roster 1 and his Compiled Service Records,2 online from fold3. Details and his role in Maryland from his regimental history sketch in Clark,3 source also of his picture, from an engraving after a photograph. Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860-1880. His memorial is on Findagrave.
He married Zene H Lassiter (1846-1869) in 1868. He married again, Love Gales Root (1848-1934) in September 1874 and they had 2 children.
His brother Henry Gray Turner (1839-1904) was also a Captain in the 23rd North Carolina, and a longtime Georgia state legislator and US Congressman (1881-97).
Birth
01/21/1837; Franklin County, NC
Death
05/11/1914; Raleigh, NC; burial in Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, NC
1 Manarin, Louis H., and Weymouth Tyree Jordan, Matthew M Brown, Michael W Coffey, North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865 : A Roster, 20 Volumes +, Raleigh: North Carolina State Department of Archives and History, 1966- [AotW citation 29318]
2 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 29319]
3 Clark, Walter, editor, Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina in the Great War, 1861-1865, 5 vols., Raleigh and Goldsboro (NC): E. M. Uzzell, Nash Brothers, printers, 1901, Vol. II, before pg. 201, pp. 220-223 [AotW citation 29320]