John Turner was a Revolutionary War soldier and neighbor of Thomas Jefferson in Amherst County, Virginia. When he moved his family to Davidson County, Tennessee, he had another famous neighbor: General Andrew Jackson. His son, William Suddarth Turner, fought with General Jackson against the Creek Indians and against the British at New Orleans, where he stayed briefly before moving to Texas in 1837. Settling near Seguin, he fought in two campaigns against Mexico while Texas was still a republic.

William R. Turner was the second of William Suddarth Turner’s seven children. He, too, fought with the Texian Army, then served as a Texas Ranger and frontier Minute Man. In 1847, he settled in Bexar County and married Sarah Allen, whose father (Hugh Allen) went into business collecting hides from wild cattle in McCulloch County sometime in the 1850s. William traded land holdings with his father-in-law in 1861, and the family (they already had four daughters and two sons; two more sons were born later) moved to a beautiful site on Katemcy Creek, near the San Saba River in what is now known as the community of Camp San Saba. The ranch came to be known as Wau-ban-see, reportedly the name given to the area by an old Comanche chief named Catumseh. The name means “mirror waters,” and refers to a pool on Katemcy Creek, which may be named after the old chief.

The Turner family originally lived in Hugh Allen’s log cabin, but as time went on they made the ranch into a remarkable showplace. Several fine rock buildings were constructed by stonemasons from San Antonio, including a beautiful home, a barn, spring house and other outbuildings. The ranch is criss-crossed by almost six miles of rock fences; the story is told that a wagon train, turned away from Fort Mason because of an outbreak of smallpox, was allowed to stop and recover at the Turner’s ranch. The survivors built much of the rock fencing in gratitude for the hospitality they had been shown.

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