Author: Palmer, William Pitt
Biography:
PALMER, William Pitt (1805-84: WBIS)
Palmer built up a respectable reputation as a poet in his lifetime, but only his first publication in book form appears in this bibliography. His poems were published in periodicals or were produced for special occasions until he gathered them in a collection of over 300 pages, Echoes of Half a Century, in 1880. (As a sample of his occasional verse there is The Promethean Flame: Verses Read at the Dinner to the National Board of Fire Underwriters in 1868. He had a sense of humour.) His father Roswell Salstonstall Palmer, who had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, became a farmer; the surname of his mother Desire Palmer appears to have been Palmer before she married as well as after, so perhaps she was a cousin. Their son was born in Stockbridge MA, graduated from Williams College in 1828, and settled in New York City. He began by studying medicine while supporting himself by journalism and language teaching, but he then took a job as an office boy with the Manhattan Insurance Company and rose to be its president. He married Clara Helen Gardner, with whom he had at least six children. Though the Company was ruined by the Chicago and Boston fires of 1871 and 1872, Palmer was made vice-president of a new venture, the Irving Insurance Company. He died at his home in Brooklyn. (Appleton; ancestry.com 8 June 2020)