Benjamin R. Palmer was born around 1827 in Ulster County, New York. He married Phebe Ann Jones, and they had at least three children: Minerva, born around 1853; Edward, born around 1855; and Olivia, born around 1858. They also adopted three children. They moved to Low Moor, Iowa, in the 1850s, and he worked as a farmer there. He reportedly served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. By 1860, he owned $2,000 of real estate and $400 of personal property. A decade later, they owned $,8000 of real estate and $5,000 of personal property.

 

He was a member of the Republican Party, and he served in the Iowa state legislature from 1866 until 1868. According to an early biographer, he supported the Prohibition movement and the  women’s suffrage movement. He moved to Rochester, New York, around 1874, and he earned a living as a builder. A local writer described him as “essentially a gentleman”—a man who “simply and unostentatiously performed his duty as he saw it.” His wife died on June 7, 1894, and he died of bronchitis and heart failure near Gananoque, Ontario, on June 15, 1901.

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