Marion, Ohio family

Susie and Clark Turney had married in 1867, three years after he was discharged from the Union army where he'd served as a private in company B of the 136th Ohio National Guard Infantry regiment.*

Thirty-five year old Carrie took time away from her millinery business to spend the Christmas holiday with her family in Chicago. Susie, age fifty-five then, along with twenty-year-old Ada and thirty-two-year-old Leo lived at 534 E. 50th Street in Chicago.  Susie kept house while Leo, having followed in his late father into the jewelry trade, worked as a salesman for a diamond broker.

That same year Clark opened a jewelry shop in Marion, north central Ohio.  Over the next twenty two years they had six children.  In 1896, after Clark's death, Susie and her three surviving daughters,† Katherine, Ada and Carrie, moved to Chicago to join Leo, the only Turney son, who had settled in Chicago around 1892.  Katherine married in 1901 and Carrie relocated to Canton, Illinois, then a city with a population of around 7,000, to open a millinery shop.

Closed Casket double funeral

Their bodies were found and identified by Leo Turney, son and brother, and Carroll H. Bennett, husband of Susie's daughter, Katherine Turney Bennett.  Susie was found first and Carrie's the next day. Reportedly the women were not severely burned but since the family chose a closed-casket funeral they may have been trampled or discolored from suffocation.  The obituary passed along a tidbit of speculation from the family that since Susie was "of a rather hysterical nature" she may have fainted at the start of the fire and never regained consciousness.  It may have been born of a prayer that she didn't suffer but I hope Susie's ghost gave them a knock on the head for standing safe in their homes, remembering her as a silly goose.

Carrie and Susie's bodies were sent by rail to Marion, OH accompanied by Katherine and her husband, Ada and Leo. The funeral was held at the home of Elizabeth Corn Dumble, Susie's sister, with services conducted by Dr. Albert E. Smith, pastor of the Epworth Methodist church in Marion.  Two black coaches led the procession to the Marion Cemetery where Carrie and Susie were laid to rest beside their father and husband, Clark Turney.

Clark Turney

An industrious retailer in Marion, offering an interesting variety of products, Turney advertised heavily in the Marion Star newspaper.  Jewelry and watches were his primary business but he also sold brooms, tableware, spectacles, toys, opera glasses, sewing machines and musical instruments.

Marion was a small market, about ten percent of today's population of 36,000, so a store would have struggled to survive on jewelry alone.  Clark's son Leo operated the store for four years after his father's death.  In 1892 he sold out to Beilenson Brothers and moved to Chicago soon thereafter.

Family:

• Iroquois fatality Susanna "Susie" Corn Turney (1848–1903), daughter of Solomon and Catherine Corn, with two brothers and a half brother.
• Iroquois fatality Carrie Turney (1868–1903) Susie's oldest daughter.  Nothing is known of Carrie's shop in Canton.  She learned the millinery trade from Edith Green Torrance, a neighbor of the Turneys on Windsor Street in Marion.  Edith's millinery business was on the second floor above the Warner & Edwards dry goods store.  As her brother Leo followed his father into the jewelry trade, Carrie seemed to share Clark's appreciation for newspapers.  She kept the Marion Star newspaper regularly apprised of her activities in high school and until her death.  Some highlights:
  In 1890, for the Longfellow Society at her high school, Carrie recited Frank Gassaway's " Pride of Battery B" about an orphaned child traveling with the Confederacy, asking Union soldiers for a loan of tobacco to cheer up rebel soldiers.
  In 1893 Carrie went to the Columbian Exposition Worlds fair in Chicago with her aunt and uncle Dumble.
  In 1894 and 1895 she worked sometimes as a sales clerk for the Nelson's Jewelry store in Marion. 
  In 1898 Carrie was stricken with an unnamed condition that involved hemorrhaging of the lungs.  Whatever the illness, her respiratory system may have had a doubly difficult time with the smoke.
• Clark Turney (1842–1889) Susie's late husband, son of John and Harriet Turney.
• Leo Turney (1870–1942) Susie's son.  Remained in Chicago and opened his own diamond brokerage.  In 1911 he married Evelyn Harris from back home in Marion, purchased a home in Chicago's New Trier area and they had five children, four boys and one daughter he named after Susie.
• Katherine "Kitty" Turney Bennett (1875–) Susie's second daughter.  Married Winslow Abbey.  They had no children and moved often, to Seattle, California and Texas.
• Carroll Bennett (1875–1937) Katherine Turney Bennett's husband.
• Ada Belle Turney (1883–965) Susie's third daughter.
• Elizabeth "Lizzie" Corn Dumble (1841–) Susie's sister

Discrepancies and addendum

The Everette disaster book miss spelled Carrie's last name as Tarney.

In the 1900 Census the Turney's address on 50th street was 570 rather than 534. Chicago instituted a major address renumbering system but not until 1909 so they moved.  It was not uncommon in the late 1890s and early 1900s for Chicagoans to move every year or two.

* Clark Turney was one of 35,000 in the 136th, made up entirely of Marion County, Ohio men.  The regiment existed for 100 days beginning May 13, 1864. It was assembled to perform garrison duty in Washington and was mustered out in August, 1864 but† Susie's daughter Florence Turney (1874—1895) died at age twenty two of diphtheria, the year before the family moved to Chicago.  A sixth child died sometime prior to 1900.

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