Walter Palmer (Puritan)

Walter Palmer (1585 - 1661) was an early Separatist Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony who helped found Charlestown and Rehoboth, Massachusetts and New London, Connecticut.

It has been suggested that Palmer was born in Yetminster, England, in 1585. He married in England and fathered five children, but it is not known who his first wife was. It is said that on April 5, 1629, he sailed on the "Four Sisters" from Gravesend, England, to Salem, Massachusetts, arriving that June. The next year, Palmer was indicted on manslaughter charges for allegedly beating a man to death. He was acquitted in November 1630. His close friend, William Chesebrough, stood as one of the witnesses in the trial."Biography of Walter Palmer". Walter Palmer Society. [http://www.walterpalmer.com/Walter_Palmer_Bio.htm] Accessed 31 July 2007.]

Palmer and Chesebrough took the Oath of a Freeman on May 18, 1631. In 1633, Palmer married a second time, to Rebecca Short. They eventually had seven children together. In 1635 Palmer was elected a selectman of Charlestown and the next year became constable.

On August 24, 1643, Palmer and Chesebrough left Charlestown and started a new settlement called Seacuncke (later renamed Rehoboth). Palmer was among the first selectmen. When the settlement assigned itself to Plymouth Colony, the deputy elected to represent Rehoboth at the Plymouth court refused to serve because he preferred attachment to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Palmer was then appointed in his place.

Palmer and Chesebrough were also dissatisfied with the Plymouth alignment, and sometime prior to 1653 John Winthrop, Jr. persuaded Chesebrough to relocate to southern Connecticut. Chesebrough obtained a convert|2300|acre|km2|0|sing=on land grant in present-day New London, Connecticut; Palmer and his son-in-law [Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. "History of New London, Connecticut: From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860". Compiled by Ceclia Griswold. H. D. Utley, New London, CT, 1950, 326.] Thomas Miner followed him and purchased land on the east bank of Wequetequoc Cove, across from Chesebrough, in present-day Mystic, Connecticut.Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. "History of New London, Connecticut: From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860". Compiled by Ceclia Griswold. H. D. Utley, New London, CT, 1950, 102.]

In August 1652, Miner built his father-in-law and himself a house on their land; the next year, both their families joined them, and other settlers soon followed. The group struggled for years for self rule. During that time, Palmer served as constable [Caulkins, Frances Manwaring. "History of New London, Connecticut: From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1860". Compiled by Ceclia Griswold. H. D. Utley, New London, CT, 1950, 104] and again as a selectman. It took until 1661 to build a church meetinghouse due to resistance from the General Court of Connecticut, which preferred the colonists travel across the river to New London. Palmer died two months after the meetinghouse was first used.

The 300-year Stonington Chronology describes Palmer as the

"...patriarch of the early Stonington settlers...(who) had been prominent in the establishment of Boston, Charlestown and Rehoboth, ...a vigorous giant, 6 feet 5 inches tall. When he settled at Southertown (Stonington) he was sixty-eight years old, older than most of the other settlers." [Boylan, James R. and Haynes, Williams. "Stonington Chronology 1649-1976: Being a Year-by-year Record of the American Way of Life". Stonington HistoricalSociety. Pequot Press. ISBN 0871060590.]

Notable Descendants

*William Adams Palmer, Governor of and Senator from VermontBrown, John Howard. "The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans". The Biographical Society, 1904.]
*Thomas Witherell Palmer, U.S. Senator from Michigan
*Nathaniel Brown Palmer, explorer after whom Palmer Land, part of the Antarctic Peninsula, is named
*Ulysses Simpson Grant, 18th President of the United States ["Ancestors of American Presidents: First Definitive Edition" by Gary Boyd Roberts and Julie Helen Otto. 1995. ISBN 978-0936124193 (Grace Palmer, #129 in Grant's ahnentafel, was the daughter of Walter Palmer.)]

External links

* [http://www.walterpalmer.com Walter Palmer Society]

Footnotes