1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Palmer, Massachusetts

PALMER, a township of Hampden county, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Pop. (1910 U.S. census) 8610. It has an area of about 31 sq. m. of broken hill country. Its chief village, also named Palmer, about 15 m. east of Springfield, is on the Chicopee river, is served by the Boston & Albany and the Central Vermont railways, and by an electric line to Springfield, and has varied manufactures; the other villages are Thorndike, Bondsville, and Three Rivers. The principal manufactures are cotton goods, carpets and wire goods. Palmer was originally settled in 1716, but received a notable accession of population from a large Scotch-Irish colony which went from Ulster to Boston in 1718. Their settlement was followed, apparently, by immigration from Ireland in 1727. In 1752 the plantation was incorporated as a “district,” and under a general state law of 1775 gained the legal rights of a township. Palmer was a centre of disaffection in the time of the Shays Rebellion.

See T. H. Temple, History of the Town of Palmer . . . 1776–1889 (Palmer, 1889).