The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 79

Notes and Documents

leave school and seek employment. This hindered the young man,
but did not stop him from a quest for an education. He pursued
it at the Webb City Baptist College on a part-time basis, having
to work from the start at anything he could get-delivering papers,
grocery store, for the railroad, and other odd jobs. He studied,
not only what was then called "natural history," but also English,
history, mathematics, economics, and poetry. He was considered
quite proficient in each of them. He also studied Latin and
Greek, especially Latin, writing Latin descriptions of all of the
genera and species he collected where such descriptions were nec-
essary.
In 19go01, at the age of twenty-five, through the good offices of
B. F. Bush, who was a Missouri collector for the Arnold Arbo-
retum of Harvard University, Palmer became acquainted with
Charles Sprague Sargent, director of the Arboretum. The same
year Palmer started his collections of the genus Crataegus and
began his work as a collector for the Arboretum, especially for
Sargent. For a good many years, Palmer restricted his studies to
the state of Missouri. In 1913, when he was thirty-eight years old,
he became officially associated with the Missouri-Botanical
Gardens for the first time. Thereafter, collections which covered
quite a large section of the southwestern United States were made
on behalf of both the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Arnold
Arboretum.
The first of Palmer's publications came in 191 o, when his paper,
"The Flora of the Grand Falls Chert Barrens" appeared in the
Transactions of The Academy of Science, St. Louis. Thereafter, he
was to become more and more important to the Arnold Arbore-
tum. In 1921, he moved to Massachusetts to become a member of
the regular staff of the Arboretum, where he continued to serve for
the twenty-seven years ensuing before 1948, when he retired.
Until 1930, Palmer was considered a confirmed bachelor by his
acquaintances who were greatly surprised to have news of his
marriage to Elizabeth McDougall, a bacteriologist at the Massa-
chusetts State Laboratory which is located alongside the Arnold
Arboretum. To this union were born three children, and the re-
sponsibility of raising a family at the relatively advanced age of
more than fifty-five naturally brought a great change in Palmer's