Capt. Amos Palmer

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Amos Palmer

Birthdate:
Birthplace: Stonington, New London County, Connecticut Colony
Death: February 18, 1816 (68)
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
Place of Burial: Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
Immediate Family:

Son of Joseph Palmer, Jr. and Katherine Palmer
Husband of Phebe Palmer and Sarah Palmer
Father of Fanny Noyes; Elizabeth Dixon; Phebe Palmer; Amos Palmer, Jr.; Harriet F. Swan and 5 others
Brother of Joseph Palmer; William Palmer; Phebe Palmer; Phebe Coats Randall; Hannah Coates Randall and 6 others

Managed by: Private User
Last Updated:

About Capt. Amos Palmer

Fire was a stem regulator of village life in Stonington, CT. James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), a Connecticut state archivist, wrote about the first devastating fire--on May 24, 1789--in his notebook:

A barn full of hay belonging to Esq. Nathaniel Miner [1732-1815], took fire, and communicated to a store & dwelling house belonging to Capt. Amos Palmer which were both consumed, with a quantity of West Indian goods, two or three hundred bushels of Indian corn & a quantity of household furniture.

Capt. Palmer's loss is about [pounds sterling]1000.

Amos Palmer built a new house on his land, and an 1809 deed for the adjoining property to the south describes the boundaries of the land conveyed with this phrase: beginning 32 links south from the southeast corner of a dwelling house that formerly belonged to Capt. Amos Palmer which house is since burnt and a new house rebuilt but not exactly on the same foundation.


The Capt. Amos Palmer House is located on Main Street in Stonington Borough. The house was built by Amos Palmer in 1787, replacing his earlier home on the same site, which had burned down when a barn on an adjoining property caught on fire. When a British cannonball hit the house during the War of 1812, Capt. Palmer waited until it had cooled and brought it to the fort to be returned to its sender! From 1837 to 1840, the house was occupied by Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, whose sister was married to Dr. George E. Palmer of Stonington, and her family. Her husband, the engineer Major George Washington Whistler, was working on the Providence to Stonington railroad. Their son, the artist James McNeill Whistler, was a child at the time. He later painted the famous portrait of his mother in 1871. The family frequently revisited the house. In the twentieth century, it was the home of the poet, Stephen Vincent Benét, and later the Canadian artist, author and filmmaker, James Houston.



HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF STONINGTON, County of New London, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1649 to 1900, by Richard Anson Wheeler, New London, CT, 1900, p. 265, 518, 521, 556


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Capt. Amos Palmer's Timeline

1747
March 11, 1747
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut Colony
1776
July 9, 1776
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
1778
August 16, 1778
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
1786
July 18, 1786
Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island, United States
1788
May 26, 1788
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
1790
August 20, 1790
Stonington, New London County , Connecticut, United States
1793
July 10, 1793
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States
1795
October 18, 1795
Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, United States