James Turner (silversmith)

James Turner (March 18, 1721 - before December 10, 1759) was an American silversmith and engraver, active in Boston and Philadelphia.

Turner was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, worked as a silversmith and engraver from 1744 to 1752 in Boston, and from 1754 to 1757 in Philadelphia.

One of his early commissions was an engraving of Boston for the cover of the American Magazine, July 1745, for whom Benjamin Franklin served as a publishing agent.

Turner's advertisement in the Boston Evening Post, June 24, 1745, reads in part: Around 1754 Turner moved his shop to Philadelphia, where he continued to engrave maps, bookplates, and for Franklin, the brass stamp of the Penn arms to be used as the masthead for Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette.

His obituary was printed in the Boston Evening-Post on December 10, 1759: "We hear from Philadelphia that Mr. James Turner, engraver, formerly of this town, lately dies there of Smallpox."