L. A. Palmer, editor of the Ripley Enterprise, was born February 22, 1840,
aboard the ship “Henry G. Pressley,” in the East Indies. His father was a
native of England, and followed the sea for fifty-four years, being master of
a vessel the most of the time. His mother, Isabella Wise, was also a native
of England, and a great-granddaughter of Sir George Grenville; she spent a
great deal of her time on the ocean, and four of the five children born to
them, were born on ship-board. She died in 1849, and was buried 86° east
longitude and 3°, 40′ latitude, and there being no minister on the ship, the
bereaved husband read the beautiful and impressive Episcopal burial service,
while our subject and his three-year-old sister stood with clasped hands, the
only mourners. Having left the sea in 1850, the father lived in Kentucky, and
then in Illinois, where he died in 1868, being eighty-eight years old. All of
the Palmer family — as far as known — have been seafaring men, and have held
responsible positions. Our subject learned his alphabet from a cooking stove
that had “Hitchcock & Glassner, manufacturers, Gravesend,” engraved on it. He
enter the Bible Publishing House, at New York, to serve an apprenticeship of
three years. Mr. Palmer then fired on a railroad engine, and took a trip
across the plains and returned, and commenced to learn piloting on a boat; but
their boat, the “A. T. Lacy,” burning at Booth’s Point, and destroying many of
the passengers, he lost his taste for piloting, but during the war he took an
active part for a time as engineer of a Confederate gun-boat. In 1865 he went
to sea as steward of a ship, and served in various capacities until 1871. In
1872 he published the Richmond Headlight aboard the steamer “Richmond,”
running from New Orleans to Louisville. From 1872 to 1877 he traversed the
United States as a journeyman printer, visiting all of the cities of any
importance. In 1878 Mr. Palmer was united in marriage to Margaret hall, by
whom he has four children. In 1885 he established the Ripley Enterprise, and
the merits of the paper establish his claim as a fine journalist. He has led
a varied and romantic life, is a man of bright fancies, warm sympathy and
unusual energy, and bids fair to rank as one of the brilliant journalists of
the new South, and is not void of poetic insight, as the lines below, selected
from one of his poems, testify:

Pass on! and leave me standing here alone. My soul predicts the future holds
for thee Wealth and the fame of men; it hath for me Life’s humbler duties.
Dear, thy every tone Hath made my pathway brighter. No weak moan Shall pass
my lips because my eyes may see Thine nevermore on earth, altho’ the tree Hang
leafless o’er my head that once weighed down With its abundant harvest. Many
a ray From out the golden past shines on the rain; But for the storm and tears
of life, the day Had never its fair rainbow. Blessed pain, That makes us
trust our Father, till the way Lead heavenward, friend, and we clasp hands
again!

Goodspeed’s Biographies of Lauderdale Co., TN