Turner Town House

When Turner was first incorporated, July 7th 1786, the early activity was on Upper Street, between where the little cemetery and Bryant Road now are. In this section there was a meeting house, a tavern, a school house, and a stage coach route to the North.

Along the Stage coach route, many farms were settled. A little village developed, Bradford, where the Nezinscot River crossed the route.

Another village, Turner Village, soon developed a little to the west of Bradford Village. There was much conflict between the two villages.

Turner's first town meeting was held on March 6, 1787, in the church meeting house on Upper Street. Town meetings were held there until 1821. In 1822, the town did not own a public building in which to hold the annual meeting, so they proposed to buy the schoolhouse next to Sylvester Jones', this proposal was rejected. From 1822 to 1830, however, town meetings were held in the cross road schoolhouse.

A town meeting was held on September 25, 1830, "to see what measures the town will take to provide themselves with a town house". It was voted "to locate the town house very near the country road leading by Captain Dura Bradford's intersects the parish line between Barnam Jones' and the said Bradford land". 93 voted in favor of this, and 76 were against it. The opposition was mostly from the eastern side of town (Bradford) because they believed Bradford village should hold the town house. They wanted a more geographically precise location between the two villages.

Meetings were held, "to see if the town will alter the location of the Town house", until April 9, 1831, when it was decided that they would not change the location.

The people from Bradford Village, still disagreed and, once construction had started (on the town house) and the frame had been built, men from the Centre took down the town house. They put it back up just east of the Centre burying ground. They secured it with jagged irons as well as the pegs normally used to fasten the parts, which made it very difficult to disassemble. A few weeks later, men from Turner Village took it down again and put it back on its original site. So the first town meeting was held there, on August 19, 1831. A little later on, due to the expansion of the cemetery, the town house had to be moved again, to its current location, where the Center adherents fixed the timbers with large spikes so they could not easily be taken apart. The town house has remained there ever since.

On July 9, 1979, the Turner Town House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in Maine.