Jonathan was educated in local schools before attending and graduating from then-Yale College, where he studied classical literature at Yale, and excelled in Greek and English composition.

[16] Jonathan Baldwin Turner was an agriculturist; he improved agriculture and established the use of the "hedge apple" or thorny Osage orange tree (Maclura pomifera), a variety of which he developed.

While working as a professor at Illinois College, Turner began searching for a plant to use as a hedge to divide, cultivate the expanse of the prairie, and contain livestock.

[20][21] Turner then advertised and sold Osage orange seeds, which were widely used as hedges before the development of barbed wire between 1867 and 1874.

[21] Jonathan Baldwin Turner became the editor of a Jacksonville abolitionist newspaper, probably during the 1840s; he also became an assistant with the Underground Railroad and a vocal opponent of slavery.

[26] After the passing of the Morrill Land-Grant Act, Jonathan Baldwin Turner opposed the power of corporations, which he described as a conflict between the "natural" and "artificial man".

[4] He wrote religious tracts championing the liberal teachings of Christ while criticizing Catholicism, Mormonism, and the Presbyterian administration of Illinois College, where he was a professor.

[30] The bronze tablet commemorates the introduction by Turner of the first institutions for scientific industrial higher learning at the Granville convention in 1851.

[31] The Jonathan Baldwin Turner Scholarship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides $8,000 to a student over three years of college.