Hon George Turner

By Dale Raugust

George Turner was perhaps the most influential Spokane lawyer during the 19th century. He served as Supreme Court Justice of Washington during territorial days, as a member of the Washington Constitutional Convention, a member of the United States Senate, and later in diplomatic service. The Honorable Judge Turner was born in Missouri in 1850. His former public education was interrupted during the Civil War as Missouri became the battleground for contending armies. Turner’s father and older brothers joined the Union army while George Turner, although only 13 years old, served as a Union telegraph operator in his home town of Lebanon, Missouri. After the war he became a carpetbagger in Alabama and in 1868, at the age of 18, and without any formal legal education, passed the Alabama Bar. He started a law practice in Mobile with a friend, Charles Mayer, of about his own age. Six years later he was narrowly defeated for state attorney general. Turner was active in Republican politics and in 1876 President Grant appointed him U. S. Marshall for the state of Alabama.
Turner came to Washington by way of another appointment, this time in 1884 to the Washington State Territorial Supreme Court. He was 34 years old. Turner was assigned to the fourth district which included eastern Washington. Originally he made his home in Yakima but in 1885 moved to Spokane. In 1887, he declared one of the first laws in the nation conferring suffrage on women, which was passed by the territorial legislature, as unconstitutional. Later that same year, he resigned his judicial appointment to establish the Spokane legal firm of Turner, Foster and Turner. Although the 1890 census records several other Turners living in Spokane at this time, I could not discover who the other Turner was in this firm. In 1889, George Turner was a member of the Washington State Constitutional Convention and chairman of the judicial committee. He was not heavily active in business outside the legal profession but did purchase an interest in the celebrated Le Roi mine in British Columbia, the sale of which made him wealthy. He invested this money into real estate becoming one of the largest landowners in Spokane County. He continued in the practice of law but remained active in local, statewide and national politics. In the 1892, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a Republican and in 1892-3, he lobbied to be appointed to the U. S. Senate, also without success. Turner had been a life long Republican but bolted the party in 1896 to side with William Jennings Bryan for President over the silver issue. A combination of Democrats, Populists and Silver Republicans defeated the Republican Party and swept the national and state elections, although Bryan did not win the presidency. The following year, the Washington State Legislature elected Turner to the United States Senate. Also serving with him was another Spokane lawyer, a Republican who had been appointed in 1894, John Wilson. Turner served a full term in the Senate and then in 1903 a presidential appointment made Turner a member of the Alaska boundary tribunal. This tribunal was created by England and the United States to settle the dispute over the Alaskan boundary with Canada. He was then appointed as the leading counsel for the United States in the northeastern fisheries arbitration at The Hague.
During his days in Spokane, from 1885 to 1897, and occasionally thereafter between his national and international duties, George Turner was involved in nearly every celebrated court case in Spokane. He was also the most influential politician in the Inland Empire and had a hand in nearly every aspect of local politics. N. W. Durham, in his 1912 history of Spokane and the Inland Empire described Turner as having a “gracious presence, a charming personality, and profound legal wisdom…” (Durham 118)