WHARTON, TURNER ASHBY (1862-1935). Turner Ashby Wharton, clergyman, was born to Jesse Rankin and Martha Lavinia (Turner) Wharton on July 8, 1862, at Greensboro, North Carolina. He was educated at a number of southern colleges and seminaries and received the B.A. degree from the University of North Carolina in 1883, the B.D. degree from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in 1886, and the D.D. degree from King College in Bristol, Tennessee, in 1898. Wharton also received an honorary LL.D. degree from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, in 1925. He was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church of the United States in 1886, the same year in which he married Lucy Taliaferro, of Roanoke, Virginia. Wharton served successively as pastor of churches at Waynesville and Steel Creek, North Carolina; Abingdon, Virginia; and Memphis and Columbia, Tennessee. He was a moderator in the Synod of Tennessee in 1907. In 1909 he accepted the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church in Sherman, Texas, a position that he held until his retirement in 1928. During his years in Sherman he also served as a member of the city's charter commission, chairman of the city health department, member of the chamber of commerce, chairman of the Speakers' Bureau for North Texas during World War I,^qv and a moderator in the Synod of Texas in 1919. Following the death of his first wife, with whom he had four children, Wharton married Floy Hurt of Abingdon, Virginia, in 1899. The couple raised three children of their own, as well as those from Wharton's first marriage. One of these children, Conway T. Wharton, succeeded his father as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Sherman. Wharton was a Democrat and a Mason. He died of heart disease on October 25, 1935.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Who Was Who in America, Vol. 1.

Brian Hart