Jeanne's World of Family

The Palmer Saga

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This page is dedicated to my father, Carl Andrew Palmer, who knew very little about his extended family and almost nothing about his ancestry. He didn't even know the names of his aunts, uncles, or most of his cousins.

In 1999, five years after his death, I took what little information he had left behind about his family and started looking for any link to my past. Since we (my 2 sisters, brother, and I) had never met any of my fathers family, all there was to go on were the names that my father knew his 5 aunts and uncles by, which in most cases, turned out to be their middle names or nicknames.

My father was born on a train returning from New Brunswick, where my grandparents were visiting Otis's family, to Merrimac, Massachusetts, where they lived (my grandfather having immigrated from Canada about 1910). Since the train had already crossed the border into the U.S., my father's place of birth was listed as the final destination on Eva's ticket.

As it turns out, my grandfather, Otis Bertrand Palmer, was the 3rd of 6 children born to George and Emily Jane (Kelly) Palmer of York County, New Brunswick, Canada. Emily died about 1893 of tuberculosis. Their eldest child, Benjamin Coburn, was about 15 and the youngest child, Besse Beatrice, was only 2. The 6 children were sent to live in different areas of New Brunswick and the United States, with different relatives of George and never came together again as a family. Although they did see each other occasionally, the 6 children were never all in the same place at the same time after their mother's death. George moved to Massachusetts, where 2 of his sisters lived, some time after Emily's death. He remarried and died in 1930. He was transported by train back to Millville, New Brunswick where he was buried next to Emily. No inscriptions were ever placed on the headstone for either Emily or George.

In Sept. 2001, the first ever Palmer Family Reunion was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, where descendants of 5 of the 6 displaced children met for the first time. A collection was taken up and an inscription was placed on the stone for both George and Emily.

The Saga Continues