Family Matters Part 2

I realize this is probably pretty boring, but it does get more interesting next post.  :)

On October 31, 1881, Nancy Bills Turner boarded the S.S. Atlas with her three daughters bound for Boston, Massachusetts.  According to a letter from my grandmother, her husband William Turner left for the United States of America some time before to secure a job and housing for the family.  Nancy along with her daughters Isabel, Florence, and Mary left Newton, England and boarded the ship just after Isabel Turner’s thirteenth birthday.  The ship arrived in Boston, Massachusetts on November 16, 1881.  I could find little more about William and Nancy Turner.  Turner was a common name in England as well as in America.  A Google search for William and Nancy Turner in Newton, England yields thousands of pages.  Searching a number of different ways still produces hundreds of leads with a recurring Joseph Mallord William Turner, an impressionist painter of the 1800s.  The fact that Isabel Turner was a teacher suggests that she was educated.  While education was more common in the late 1800’s, for females it was generally reserved for those who could afford it so it is likely her parents came from at least a middle class or upper middle class background.  Regardless of the socioeconomic status of William and Nancy Turner, it is evident that their daughter Isabel Turner married into the elite upper class of Fall River society.