PALMER, JOEL: 1810-1881.
Joel Palmer , son of Ephraim and Hannah Phelps Palmer, was born in Ontario, Canada, on Oct. 4, 1810. His parents were Quakers who returned to New York state at the beginning of the War of 1812. When he was sixteen years old, young Joel went to Bucks County, Pa., and worked as a laborer on canals and other public improvement projects. He learned canal construction and, since canals were being dug along most every likely waterway in the Midwest, found plenty of employment. By 1836 he was a resident of Laurel, Ind., with a contract for the construction of a part of the Whitewater Canal. He prospered, at least moderately, and was elected a representative (1843-45) of Franklin County in the Indiana General Assembly.
Public honors and private prosperity were not enough to hold even a successful young business man when the Western fever struck, and in the middle Forties Joel Palmer made a trip to the West and wrote an account of his adventures.
It is a very small book, bound sometimes in printed wrappers and sometimes (evidently for the more affluent book buyers of the day) in cloth: in either case its modern selling price is well up in three figures. According to American Authors, 1600-1900, it is "the only complete written record of pioneering along the old Oregon trail" (p. 592). This would appear to be a rather broad statement, but it is certainly an informative, a fairly well written and a very rare book.
Palmer returned to Indiana in 1847 for a brief time, then went back to Oregon, where he laid out the town of Dayton and built a grist mill. In 1853 he was Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory, and he was active in state politics throughout the remainder of his life.
He died in Dayton, Ore., on June 9, 1881. Palmer was first married to Catherine Caffee. After her death he married Sarah Ann Derbyshire in 1836.
Information from Kunitz and Haycraft–American Authors, 1600-1900.
- Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains to the Mouth of
the Columbia River. Cincinnati, 1847.
