Susan Carmichael has provided the following.
John was the eldest son of James and Isabella (nee Todd) Turnbull.
The 1901 census records the family, James and Isabella along with their children, John (1892), Ellen (1895), James (1897), and Alexander 1901, living at 4, Farm Cottages, Bedlington, Northumberland.
By the 1911 census the family was living at 2, Swanns Cottages, West Sleekburn Farm, Bedlington, Northumberland.
John’s father, James was a widower, Isabella having died in 1906, aged 35 years.
James was a farm labourer, John worked at a local coal mine, with the ponies underground.
John enlisted into the Northumberland Fusiliers in Bedlington.
According to Soldiers Died in the Great War there were two men called J. Turnbull, both were born in West Sleekburn, both served with the Northumberland Fusiliers, in different battalions, neither rose above the rank of private, both died in 1916.
A “J. Turnbull” is remembered in West Sleekburn on W34.01 and in Newbiggin by the Sea on N10.06 and N10.14
