History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN

1247

FRANK E. PALMER has a place today among the foremost citizens of
Jackson. As president of the Peninsular Portland Cement Company, vice
president of the Central State Bank of Jackson and for thirty-six years
prominently identified with the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and its successor, the International Harvester Company of America,
he has a wide acquaintance and a representative following in business
circles of the city and state, so that he is in every way entitled to the position he occupies in the ranks of Jackson's leading citizens.
Mr. Palmer was born on a Lenawee county farm, this state, on November I8, 1853, and he is a son of Marvin E. Palmer. This farm the
elder Palmer had entered from the government as early as 1831, he being
one of the pioneers of Lenawee county. He came to the state in 1831
from Ira, Cayuga county, New York, where he was born in 1811. His
father, Jarius Palmer, had been in his day a pioneer of Cayuga county,
and he was a veteran of the War of I812.
The Lenawee county farm which Marvin E. Palmer entered from the
government in 1831 lay six miles west of Adrian. In 1857 Marion Palmer
removed from Lenawee county to St. Johns, in Clinton county, Michigan,
and there for something like a half dozen years he continued to be identified with mercantile pursuits. He also became the first president of St.
Johns village, and while residing there held other offices in the community.
In 1863 he returned to his Lenawee county farm, which, though he'had
sold it in 1857 when he moved to Clinton county, he was obliged to take
back owing to the inability of the purchaser to pay for it. In the fall of
1863 Mr. Palmer disposed of his farm on more satisfactory terms, purchasing another place that was more to his liking in Liberty township,
Jackson county. On this place he continued to live for a good many years,
but in 1882 the desire for change impelled him to sell the place, and he
removed to Jackson, where he died on October 12, 1899, at the ripe age
of eighty-seven years.
In about 1849 Marvin E. Palmer married Phoebe Beals, in Dover
township, Lenawee county. She was born at North Adams, Massachusetts, and she died in Jackson when she had reached the exact age at which
her husband passed out, her death occurring on May I8, I909.
Since 1878 Frank E. Palmer has made this city his home and the center
of his business activities. He came here after completing his studies in
the Michigan Agricultural College at Lansing, and it should be mentioned
here that while he pursued his studies there, he alternated his duties as a
student with periods of work as a teacher. It was thus that he earned the
money that made possible his college education, four terms of pedagogic
work representing his activities in that field. When he had finished his
junior year at the Agricultural College, Mr. Palmer came to Jackson, and
straightway entered the employ of C. H. and L. J. McCormick, who later
became known to the world as the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. In 1902 it was merged in the enormous concern known as the International Harvester Company, with headquarters in Chicago. He entered the employ of the company in a subordinate capacity, advancing from
the post of book-keeper to that of state collection agent, and for more
than twenty-five years he was thus connected, until the forming of the
International Harvester Company, in 1902, since which time he has continued in the same capacity. His combined service with the McCormick
Harvester Company and its successor, the International Harvester Company, has extended over a period of thirty-six years, and the past quarter
century has been spent in his present position of state collection agent, a
post he has filled with the utmost efficiency.
In addition to his service with this great concern, Mr. Palmer has long
been a prominent man of affairs in Jackson, and is officially identified with