Palmer was elected mayor of Reading, and from 1878–1885 he was Liberal member of Parliament for the town. He died at Reading, to which he had been a most generous benefactor, on the 19th of August 1897. His sons, George William Palmer (b. 1851) and Sir Walter Palmer (b. 1858), displayed a like munificence, particularly in connexion with University College, Reading. George William Palmer, besides being mayor of Reading, represented the town in Parliament as a Liberal. Sir Walter Palmer, who was created a baronet in 1904, became Conservative member for Salisbury in 1900.
PALMER, JOHN McAULEY (1817–1900), American soldier
and political leader, was born at Eagle Creek, Kentucky, on the
13th of September 1817. In 1831 his family removed to Illinois,
and in 1839 he was admitted to the bar in that state. He was
a member of the state constitutional convention of 1847. In
1852–1855 he was a Democratic member of the state Senate, but
joined the Republican party upon its organization and became
one of its leaders in Illinois. He was a delegate to the Republican
national convention in 1856 and a Republican presidential
elector in 1860. In 1861 he was a delegate to the peace convention
in Washington. During the Civil War he served in the
Union army, rising from the rank of colonel to that of major-general
in the volunteer service and taking part in the capture
of New Madrid and Island No. 10, in the battles of Stone River
and Chickamauga, and, under Thomas, in the Atlanta campaign.
He was governor of Illinois from 1869 to 1873. In 1872 he
joined the Liberal-Republicans, and eventually returned to the
Democratic party. In 1891–1897 he was a Democratic member
of the United States Senate. In 1896 he was nominated for the
presidency, by the “Gold-Democrats,” but received no electoral votes. He died at Springfield, Illinois, on the 25th of September 1900.
See The Personal Recollections of John M. Palmer—The Story of an Earnest Life, published posthumously in 1901.
PALMER, RAY (1808–1887), American clergyman and hymn writer,
was born in Little Compton, Rhode Island, on the 12th
of November 1808. He graduated at Yale College in 1830, and
in 1832 was licensed to preach by the New Haven West Association
of Congregational Ministers. In 1835–1850 he was pastor
of the Central Congregational Church of Bath, Maine, and in
1850–1866 of the First Congregational Church of Albany, New
York; and from 1866 to 1878 was corresponding secretary of the
American Congregational Union. He died on the 29th of March
1887 in Newark, New Jersey, where, from 1881 to 1884 he had
been assistant pastor of the Belleville Avenue Congregational
Church. His most widely known hymn, beginning “My faith
looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary,” was written in 1830,
was set to the tune “Olivet” by Lowell Mason, and has been
translated into many languages; his hymn beginning “Jesus,
these eyes have never seen” (1858) is also well-known.
Among the hymns translated by him are those beginning: “O Christ, our King, Creator, Lord” (by Gregory the Great); “Come Holy Ghost in love” (by Robert II. of France); “Jesus, thou Joy of loving hearts” (by Bernard of Clairvaux); and “O, Bread to pilgrims given” (from the Latin). Other hymns (some of them translations from Latin) and poems were collected in his Complete Poetical Works (1876), followed in 1880 by Voices of Hope and Gladness. He also wrote Spiritual Improvement (1839), republished in 1851 as Closet Hours; Hints on the Formation of Religious Opinions (1860), and Earnest Words on True Success in Life (1873).
PALMER, SAMUEL (1805–1881), English landscape painter
and etcher, was born in London on the 27th of January 1805.
He was delicate as a child, but in 1819 he exhibited both at the
Royal Academy and the British Institution; and shortly afterwards
he became intimate with John Linnell, who introduced
him to Varley, Mulready, and, above all, to William Blake, whose
strange and mystic genius had the most powerful effect on
Palmer’s art. An illness led to a residence of seven years at
Shoreham in Kent, and the characteristics of the scenery of the
district are constantly recurrent in his works. Among the more
important productions of this time are the “Bright Cloud” and
the “Skylark,” paintings in oil, which was Palmer’s usual medium
in earlier life. In 1839 he married a daughter of Linnell. The
wedding tour was to Italy, where he spent over two years in
study. Returning to London, he was in 1843 elected an associate
and in 1854 a full member of the Society of Painters in Water
Colours, a method to which he afterwards adhered in his painted
work. His productions are distinguished by an excellent command
over the forms of landscape, and by mastery of rich,
glowing and potent colouring. Among the best and most
important paintings executed by Palmer during his later years
was a noble series of illustrations to Milton’s L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso. In 1853 the artist was elected a member of the
English Etching Club. Considering his reputation and success
in this department of art, his plates are few in number. Their
virtues are not those of a rapid and vivid sketch; they aim rather
at truth and completeness of tonality, and embody many of the
characteristics of other modes of engraving—of mezzo tint, of
line, and of woodcut. Readily accessible and sufficiently
representative plates maybe studied in the “Early Ploughman,”
in Etching and Etchers (1st ed.), and the “Herdsman’s Cottage,”
in the third edition of the same work. In 1861 Palmer removed
to Reigate, where he died on the 24th of May 1881. One of his
latest efforts was the production of a series of etchings to illustrate
his English metrical version of Virgil’s Eclogues, which was
published in 1883, illustrated with reproductions of the artist’s
water-colours and with etchings, of which most were completed
by his son, A. H. Palmer.
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).
PALMER, a pilgrim who as a sign or token that he had made
pilgrimage to Palestine carried a palm-branch attached to his
staff, or more frequently a cross made of two strips of palm-leaf
fastened to his hat. The word is frequently used as synonymous
with “pilgrim” (see Pilgrimage). The name “palmer” or
“palmer-worm” is often given to many kinds of hairy caterpillars,
specifically to that of the destructive tineid moth,
Ypsilophus pometella. The name is either due to the English
use of “palm” for the blossom or catkin of the willow-tree, to
which the caterpillars bear some resemblance, or to the wandering
pilgrim-like habits of such caterpillars. Artificial flies used
in angling, covered with bristling hairs, are known also as
“palmers” or “hackles.”
PALMERSTON, HENRY JOHN TEMPLE, 3rd Viscount (1784–1865), English statesman, was born at Broadlands, near Romsey, Hants, on the 20th of October 1784. The Irish branch of the Temple family, from which Lord Palmerston descended, was very distantly related to the great English house of the same name, but these Irish Temples were not without distinction. In the reign of Elizabeth they had furnished a secretary to Sir Philip Sidney and to Essex in Sir William Temple (1555–1627), afterwards provost of Trinity College, Dublin, whose son. Sir John Temple (1600–1677), was master of the rolls in Ireland. The latter’s son. Sir William Temple (q.v.), figured as one of the ablest diplomatists of the age. From his younger brother. Sir John Temple (1632–1704), who was speaker of the Irish House of Commons, Lord Palmerston descended. The eldest son of the speaker, Henry, 1st Viscount Palmerston (c. 1673–1757), was created a peer of Ireland on the 12th of March 1723, and was
