The original Turpin emigrants came from Yorkshire, England and settled in Chesterfield County, Virginia. One of them was Philip Turpin. He had a son, Thomas Turpin, who married Obedience Goode of the famous Goode family in the Old Dominion [Virginia]. He was the father of Thomas Turpin, Jr. who wed Mary Jefferson. They were the parents of a family of ten children, among whom were two Philips.

The first Philip died young; the second, Philip Turpin, survived to manhood and married Caroline Rose, and became a physician in and near Richmond, Virginia. He never was a proprietor in Ohio, and never visited the Miami country; but was the assignee of an extensive "army right," or land-warrant (No. 1007) granted to Lieutenant John Crittenden, in consideration of military services in the Revolutionary War.

Dr. Philip Turpin gave to his only son, Philip Turpin, by assignment, the right to one thousand acres in the Virginia military district, under the Crittenden warrant. Young Philip made several trips on horseback, near the close of the century, to and from the Miami Valley. It is believed that in the year 1797, he set his stakes and began improvement on the rich tract below Newtown, Ohio.

After a few years Philip moved to the Kentucky shore for a more healthful location, and resided on the hills opposite the mouth of the Little Miami. On October 9, 1799, President John Adams and Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State, signed Turpin's patent to the Survey No. 416 of one thousand acres.

In 1807, Philip Turpin married Miss Mary Smith, whose family had immigrated to Kentucky from New York. After living five to six years in the Kentucky hills, where his first children, Philip and Ebenezer, were born, the Turpin family moved to a farm in Hamilton County, Ohio. Caroline Matilda Rozenia Turpin was born in Newtown, Ohio, on May 13, 1810. One of nine children of Philip Turpin and Mary Smith, she was 11 years old when she finished this sampler.

On July 3, 1822, at the age of 12, Caroline drowned when the skiff in which she was riding overturned crossing the Little Miami River at Round Bottom ford in Southwest Ohio.  The sampler may be the only existing legacy of this little pioneer girl.

The Turpin sampler was given to the Greater Milford Area Historical Society, Milford, Ohio in 1973 by Florence Joslin. She acquired it from Joel Gordon, an employee in her furniture store in Milford. There was some deterioration and discolored areas because of the wood that backed the original piece. After restoration and preservation, the Turpin Sampler was deposited in the Promont House Museum, 906 Main Street, Milford, Ohio.