Researching Joseph Palmer

Palmer was born at Shaugh Prior, Devonshire, England, on March 31, 1716, a son of John and Joan Palmer, née Pearse. He married Mary Cranch on the April 4, 1746, at Ermington and emigrated to Massachusetts later that year with his brother-in-law Richard Cranch.

In 1752 they built a glassworks in Germantown, now a part of Quincy, Massachusetts. Later they built a chocolate mill and spermaceti and salt factories. By the 1770s Palmer had become a supporter of American independence. He fought in the Battle of Lexington and served in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and on the Cambridge Committee of Safety. He sent Israel Bissell on his ride to warn that the war with Britain had begun. He received a commission as a colonel in the Massachusetts militia and as brigadier for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, in 1776. He went on intelligence-gathering missions in Vermont and Rhode Island and, as brigadier-general, led a failed attack on Newport, Rhode Island. After the war, he returned to his businesses. Heavy debt forced him to leave Germantown and he started a salt factory on the Boston Neck in 1784. Palmer died four years later at his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on December 25, 1788.

Wednesday morning near 10 of the clock - Watertown. To all the friends of American liberty be it known that this morning before break of day, a brigade, consisting of about 1,000 to 1,200 men landed at Phip's Farm at Cambridge and marched to Lexington, where they found a company of our colony militia in arms, upon whom they fired without any provocation and killed six men and wounded four others. By an express from Boston, we find another brigade are now upon their march from Boston supposed to be about 1,000. The Bearer, Israel Bissell, is charged to alarm the country quite to Connecticut and all persons are desired to furnish him with fresh horses as they may be needed. I have spoken with several persons who have seen the dead and wounded. Pray let the delegates from this colony to Connecticut see this. J. Palmer, one of the Committee of Safety.

Palmer entered the United States Foreign Service in 1939. In 1941, he began a four-year tour of duty as consular officer in Nairobi. He then served as assistant chief of the African division of the State Department in Washington, 1945–49. He held various diplomatic positions in Africa throughout the 1950s.

In 1960, following agitation by Nigerian nationalists, the British Empire relinquished its control over Colonial Nigeria and Nigeria entered the Commonwealth of Nations as an independent nation on October 1, 1960. In preparation for Nigerian independence, on September 23, 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Palmer as the United States' first Ambassador to Nigeria. Palmer established the American embassy in Lagos on October 1, 1960, and presented his credentials to the Government of Nigeria three days later. The official Declaration of Independence was signed in the main boardroom of the Federal Palace Hotel in Lagos. When the Nigerian First Republic was proclaimed in October 1963, Palmer was re-accredited, presenting his new credentials to the government on December 12, 1963. Palmer's tenure as Ambassador to Nigeria ended on January 16, 1964.

President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Palmer as Director General of the Foreign Service on February 16, 1964, and Palmer served in this capacity until April 10, 1966.

On April 1, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Palmer as the third U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. He served in this post until July 7, 1969.

The next day, he took up his position as the U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Libya, having been appointed by President Richard Nixon. Palmer was present in Libya on September 1, 1969, when a group of military officers led by Muammar al-Gaddafi staged a coup d’état against King Idris while he was in Turkey for medical treatment. After the 1969 coup, Gaddafi closed American and British bases and partially nationalized foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya. Gaddafi's anti-American attitude and his support of international terrorism led the United States to recall Ambassador Palmer on November 7, 1972.