Frederick Jackson Turner

Lore & Background

Turner was born in Portage, Wisconsin, the son of Andrew Jackson Turner and Mary Olivia Hanford Turner, and grew up in a middle-class family. His father was active in Republican politics, an investor in a railroad, and a newspaper editor and publisher; his mother taught school. Turner was influenced by the writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as scientists such as Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Julian Huxley, and the development of cartography. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1884 and earned his PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 with a thesis on the fur trade in Wisconsin, under the supervision of Herbert Baxter Adams.

Turner did not publish extensively; his influence came from tersely expressed interpretive theories in his articles, which influenced his hundreds of disciples. His two most influential theories were the 'Frontier Thesis' and the 'Sectional Hypothesis.' He proved adept at promoting his ideas and his students, for whom he obtained jobs in major universities, including Merle Curti and Marcus Lee Hansen. He circulated copies of his essays and lectures, published extensively in magazines, and wielded considerable influence within the American Historical Association. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the major history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history compatible with his theories.

Turner was never comfortable at Harvard; when he retired in 1922 he became a visiting scholar at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles. His model of sectionalism as a composite of social forces encouraged historians to use social history to analyze American developments. After his death, former colleague Isaiah Bowman criticized Turner's ideas as 'curiously wanting in evidence from field studies,' but his ideas influenced the new field of environmental history and gave a strong impetus to quantitative methods.

Reader's Guide

Turner's frontier thesis, first presented in his 1893 essay 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History,' argued that the western frontier shaped American democracy and character, producing traits such as informality, violence, crudeness, democracy, and initiative. This thesis had an enormous effect on historical scholarship, though during recent years historians and academics have argued frequently over Turner's work. Critics from the 1960s onward complained that he neglected regionalism and claimed too much egalitarianism for a frontier that was restrictive for women and minorities. Turner's sectionalism thesis, collected in 'The Significance of Sections in American History,' which won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1933, argued that different ethnocultural groups had distinct settlement patterns that revealed themselves in politics, economics, and society. Despite criticism, Turner's ideas influenced many types of historiography, including religious history, and his emphasis on interdisciplinary and quantitative methods has been confirmed by later scholars using new statistical techniques. Turner believed that because of his own biases and the amount of conflicting historical evidence, an interdisciplinary method was the most accurate way to analyze history.

Did You Know?

• Turner earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1890 with a thesis on the fur trade in Wisconsin.
• He was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity while at the University of Wisconsin.
• Turner's essay 'The Significance of the Frontier in American History' was read before the American Historical Association in Chicago during the World's Columbian Exposition.
• By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the major history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history compatible with his theories.