Enoch Palmer Jr. was born on January 12, 1844, in Ohio to Enoch Palmer. His father was a farmer who owned $6,000 of real estate and $1,300 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Pierpont, Ohio, and by the early 1860s, he was working as a farmer. By 1870, he owned $5,000 of real estate and $1,500 of personal property. He married Etta Lamphear on March 21, 1880, and they had at least one child. They briefly lived in Beaver, Pennsylvania, but they moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, by the early 1890s. He died there of apoplexy on July 6, 1892.