FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER
1861-1932
Considered the most important historian of the United States in the twentieth century,
Frederick Jackson Turner brought a new understanding to the meaning of the American
experience. He was born in Portage; his father was Andrew Jackson Turner, a longtime local
newspaper editor and civic activist. Wiling Turner left Portage to study at the University
of Wisconsin in Madison (B.A. 1884, M. A.1888) and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore
(Ph. D 1890). He taught at the University of Wisconsin (1889-1910) and at Harvard University
(1910~24) and, after a Madison stay, became senior research associate at the Huntington
Library in California (1927-32). Turner's essay on "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History," delivered in Chicago in 1893, reoriented the study of American history toward the
nation's westward migration and Its conse~ quences. For over a half century Turners
frontier thesis, along with his own and his students' emphasis on the history of sections
of the U. S., new research resources, and environmentalism, defined the American
character and dominated research and teaching on the American experience.

Erected 1993