Marie C. Turk (1881-1972)

Marie C. Turk, from her book of poems Always in Christ (1961)

The hymn “God’s Daily Care” was previously published in the Latter-day Saint collections The Children Sing (1951) and Sing With Me (1969), but is not included in most recent Primary songbook, The Children’s Songbook (1989). Instead, it appears in Hymns (1985), the current edition of the Latter-day Saint hymnal, grouped among small section of children’s hymns. The words are credited to Marie C. Turk, and the music to Latter-day Saint composer Willy Reske. The hymnal gives no biographical information concerning Turk, only a questionable copyright notice beside her name, dated 1951, and identifying the owner of the copyright as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This 1951 date refers, of course, to The Children Sing. But Turk was not a Latter-day Saint author, and her words were likely first published elsewhere. There are no indications that the text has been altered from the original.

The source from which Reske borrowed these words remains unknown. He later composed a musical setting for another of Turk’s poems, “Easter Carol.” (see Catalog of Copyright Entries.) It is not known if he was personally acquainted with Turk, but according to Karen Lynn Davidson, in Our Latter-Day Hymns, Reske claims that Turk “was born and lived in Arizona, that she published several books of poetry and wrote many poems for Lutheran publications, and that she died in the 1950s.” (Davidson, 451). He was partially correct.

Turk published at least two books of poetry, Moments of Comfort (1938), and Always in Christ (1961). The latter collection includes a short biographical sketch of Turk, while a photograph of the author appears on the back of the dust jacket.

She was born Marie Cornelia Clara Roegge on December 18, 1881 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, Franz Heinrich “Henry” Roegge, was an immigrant from Germany, and her mother, Anna Maria Carolina (Walker) Roegge, although born in Ohio, was the daughter of German immigrants. Together they raised ten children, of whom Maria was the third.

Marie’s early life was filled with hardship, and she was forced to live with her grandmother in Cleveland until the age of nine. Although she attended school, she only completed an eighth grade education.

Marie was married on April 28, 1904 in Cleveland, Ohio, to the Reverend Otto Turk. Her husband was born in Germany in December 1880, and was brought to the United States at four months old. He was raised and educated in Cleveland, and this may have been how he and Marie met. He graduated from the Lutheran Seminary in St. Louis in June 1903, and was ordained as minister of the Zion German Evangelical Lutheran U. A. C. of Kappa, Howard County, Indiana on August 24, 1903. During his pastorate at Kappa, he and Marie were married. Shortly afterward they removed to Goodland, Indiana, where two children were born: Henry Charles Turk, born on May 7, 1905, later became a college professor in Kansas, and was the author of several books; Ruth Emma Turk, born March 1, 1907, married Paul Adam Andrew Martin Sattelmeier in 1930, and died June 25, 1999 in Lake Jackson, Texas.

In 1908 the Reverend Turk was transferred to Mishawaka, Indiana, and served there for sixteen years as pastor of St. Peter’s German Lutheran Evangelical Church. In 1924 he went to Niles, Michigan, to found a new congregation, and later that same year moved to Detroit, where he was assigned by the Michigan district of the Lutheran Church as institutional chaplain at the city and county jails, the Detroit House of Correction, and Herman Kiefer Hospital.

Marie lived with her husband in Detroit until 1936, when she was advised by her doctor that due to a serious lung infection, she needed a change of climate to improve her health. She moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she spent the remainder of her life. Although Marie and her husband remained married, he kept his pastorate in Detroit after she went to Tucson, and it appears, for the most part, their lives over the next two decades were spent apart. Otto Turk died on August 7, 1959, in Detroit, Michigan.

Living by herself in Arizona, Marie suffered from extreme loneliness, so she poured all of her energy into her writing. She wrote hundreds of poems, many of which were published in the Arizona Daily Star, the Lutheran Witness, This Day, and other periodicals. Many of her poems were written in her small back yard, “where Marie Turk loved to sit with a pad on her lap, writing down her thoughts about her Lord Jesus Christ.” (Turk, forward).

Marie Turk passed away in Tucson, Arizona, on April 28, 1972, at the age of ninety, and was buried beside her husband at Glen Eden Memorial Park, Lutheran Cemetery, in Livonia, Wayne County, Michigan.

Notes:

*The first publication of Turk’s poem has not yet been found. “God’ Daily Care” may have originated in one of the Lutheran periodicals to which Turk contributed verse. It does not appear in her book Always in Christ (1961), and I have not had the opportunity to search through her earlier book Moments of Comfort (1938). The only known copy of this latter book is located at Brown University, and when I visited the the John Hay Library at Brown University I had so many other things I wanted to look at that forgot about searching this book until after it was too late.
*The copyright notice on “God’s Daily Care” is not the only questionable copyright in the current Latter-day Saint Hymnal. The words of “Great King of Heaven” (Hymn no. 63) include a 1948 copyright date by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is perplexing since Carrie Thomas’s words were first published in the Relief Society Magazine in 1917, and were not altered for either the 1948 or 1985 hymnals.

Sources:

“News of Mishawaka,” South Bend (Indiana) News-Times, August 14, 1913, 8.

Fred O. Schultze, “Chaplain at Jail Marks 50 Years,” Detroit Times, August 25, 1952, 32.

Library of Congress, Copyright Office. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Third Series. Volume II, Part 5, Number 1: Music January-June 1957 (Washington, D. C.: Copyright Office, The Library of Congress, 1958), 119.

“Otto Turk, Veteran Minister,” Detroit Times, August 10, 1959, 17.

“Ex-Pastor, 78, Dies in Detroit,” South Bend (Indiana) Tribune, August 17, 1959, 20.

Marie Turk, Always in Christ: Poems (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1961).

Marie C. Turk [Marie Cornelia Clara Roegge], Social Security Claim Number 386-36-3732, 30 June 1972, Application for Social Security and Tax Accountant Number (Form SS-5), Social Security Administration, Baltimore, Maryland. [Note: This was her husband’s Social Security number. Marie did not have a Social Security number when this form was filled out. Her Social Security number, 526-31-6123, was assigned in 1973.]

“Funeral Notices,” Arizona Daily Star, April 20, 1972, 4, section C.

“Funeral Notices,” Tucson Daily Citizen, April 29, 1972, 19.

“Zion Church held first service more than one century ago,” Kokoma (Indiana) Tribune, July 5, 1975, 5.

Karen Lynn Davidson, Our Latter-Day Hymns: the Stories and the Messages (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1988), 451.

“United States Census, 1900,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MMZ6-NTQ : accessed 31 May 2019), Marie Roegge in household of Henry Roegge, Precinct C Cleveland City Ward 33, Cuyahoga, Ohio, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 162, sheet 10A, family 214, NARA microfilm publication T623 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1972.); FHL microfilm 1,241,258.

“United States Census, 1920,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MF46-T3Y : accessed 31 May 2019), Marie Turk in household of Otto Turk, Mishawaka, St Joseph, Indiana, United States; citing ED 202, sheet 9A, line 7, family 180, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), roll 462; FHL microfilm 1,820,462.

“United States Census, 1930,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X7SP-STT : accessed 31 May 2019), Marie Turk in household of Otto Turk, Detroit (Districts 0751-0879), Wayne, Michigan, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 829, sheet 19B, line 52, family 43, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1066; FHL microfilm 2,340,801.