Internal reference no: Accession 7611
Lieutenant Gideon Palmer, 1749-1824, took a land grant along Palmer Pond, near Dorchester, Westmorland County, New Brunswick, in 1802. His son Gideon, 1808-1880, who inherited Lieutenant Palmer’s grist and sawmill business, built vessels from ca. 1843 to 1913, in a shipyard established at Palmer Pond. After his death, Gideon’s sons, Hiram, Barlow, and Philip, continued building vessels until the 1890's. The Palmer’s built about 30 vessels, the largest and last vessel being “Queen of the Fleet”, built in 1876.
Published
Title based on contents.
Contents of this fonds include four series:
- Ships, which contains accounts, bills, receipts, and other shipping documentation pertaining to ships built by the Palmer’s;
- Accounts, which contains financial records, accounts records of various family members, receipts, promissory notes, bonds, and letters;
- Legal documents, which contains deeds, articles of agreements, insurance policies and other legal documentation;
- Personal, which contains legal documentation, wills, essays, postcards, and correspondence of the Palmer family.
Originals are fragile
Donated by Mrs. H. Bannister, via Pauline Spatz, 1976
In 1973, Mrs. H. Bannister loaned material on the Palmer Shipyards, relating to the voyages of the barkentine, "H.W.Palmer" and the "Queen of the Fleet", to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, to be sorted and microfilmed. Also received were 8 boxes of manuscripts, that were sorted and inventoried by archivists, and a collection of various unsorted papers. This material became the property of the Mount Allison University Archives upon the death of Mrs. H. Bannister in 1981(?).
The Journal of Voyage from Sackville to Queenstown by the “Schooner Peruvian”, June 22, 1860, with Captain James Frederick Maxwell, was received by Mrs. Electra Wood. Date and details are unverified.
Available at the repository on 2 microfilm reels, produced in 1976
Researchers must use the microfilm copy
Inventory available at repository