John Turner, Esq. (December 12, 1712 – February 6, 1794) was a Massachusetts politician and was a delegate from

Pembroke, Massachusetts Pembroke is a small historic town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Pembroke is a South Shore suburb of the Boston metropolitan area. The town is located about halfway between Boston and Cape Cod. The town is considered rural wi ...

to the first

Massachusetts Provincial Congress The Massachusetts Provincial Congress (1774–1780) was a provisional government created in the Province of Massachusetts Bay early in the American Revolution. Based on the terms of the colonial charter, it exercised ''de facto'' control over the ...

in 1774. In his role as town clerk for the town of Pembroke, Massachusetts, he is known as the author of the "Pembroke Resolves".

Pembroke Resolves (1772)

The Boston

Committee of Correspondence The committees of correspondence were, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independe ...

read their

Boston Pamphlet The ''Boston Pamphlet'' was a 1772 pamphlet published in Boston in the American Revolution. Written by members of the Boston Committee of Correspondence, the pamphlet outlined the rights of British American colonists and indicated how recent Brit ...

at a Boston town meeting held at

Faneuil Hall Faneuil Hall ( or ; previously ) is a marketplace and meeting hall located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. Opened in 1742, it was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others ...

on November 20, 1772, which enumerated many violations against the American colonists by British Parliament and the King of England. The pamphlet called for towns across Massachusetts to form

committees of correspondence The committees of correspondence were, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independe ...

of their own. The citizens of Pembroke, Massachusetts held a town meeting on December 28, 1772 to discuss the Boston Pamphlet, and came to a collective agreement that the major grievances outlined in the Boston Pamphlet were reasonable, and they further determined to elect a Committee of Correspondence from Pembroke to create a set of their own Resolves against the British administration. Pembroke elected town clerk John Turner Esq., Dr. Jeremiah Hall (a friend of

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...

), Capt. Seth Hatch, Abel Stetson, and

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

Samuel Goold to the committee. John Turner Esq. authored the official response, and recorded them in the Pembroke town records. The Pembroke Resolves are known for containing one of the early direct references in the American colonies to an impending split with England:

"Resolved, that if the measures so justly complained of by this province and the other colonies on the continent, are persisted in and enforced by fleets and armies, they must (we think of it with pain) they will in a little time, issue in the total dissolution of the union between Mother Country and the colonies, to the infinite loss of the former and regret of the latter."

Legacy

As of 2019, the Turner estate, located at the intersection of Route 14 and Route 53 on Washington St. in Pembroke, is the subject of an archaeological survey by the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a Public university, public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus Un ...

. Massachusetts Representative Josh S.Cutler (D-6th Plymouth) passed a Proclamation in the Massachusetts House of Representatives declaring December 28, 2018 as Pembroke Resolves Day, honoring John Turner's authorship of the Pembroke Resolves.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, John 18th-century Massachusetts politicians 1712 births 1794 deaths