Joseph Pearse Palmer

(July 31, 1750 – June 25, 1797) 

Joseph Pearse Palmer was a merchant in Boston, with three warehouses on Long Wharf and a store opposite John Marston’s Golden Ball Tavern on Merchant’s Row.  

His father, the prominent merchant and Son of Liberty Joseph Palmer, advised his son in the family’s Boston business, which expanded outside the city to several factories and mills in Germantown, a neighborhood of today’s Quincy, Massachusetts. 

Leading up to the Boston Tea Party, Palmer was very active in the revolutionary activity in Boston. He was a member of “Colonel” John Hancock’s Corps of Cadets and defended his fellow cadets, James Foster Condy and Moses Grant, who refused to show respect to despised customs officials. One month before the Boston Tea Party, Palmer was one of the presenters of a petition on November 17, 1773, to Loyalist Boston merchant and East India Company Consignee Richard Clarke & Sons, protesting the Tea Act.  

Following the “destruction of the tea,” Palmer is quoted as saying to his wife, Betsey, “We have only been making a little saltwater tea,” upon returning from Griffin’s Wharf. In her recollection of the events, Mrs. Palmer also mentioned that Stephen Bruce accompanied her husband. Joseph Pearse Palmer was one of the few who were publicly suspected of participating in the “destruction of the tea” by the Governor. Subsequently, he relocated his family to neighboring Watertown for their safety. During the Revolutionary War, Palmer became very engaged. His father wrote the Lexington Alarm, which rallied Minutemen across Massachusetts and Connecticut. Both father and son rode to Concord on April 19, 1775. Palmer soon served as Quartermaster General of Massachusetts during the Siege of Boston and later served in the Rhode Island campaign of 1777 under his father, who held the rank of General. 

Joseph Pearse Palmer was killed in Woodstock, Vermont, on June 25, 1797, while falling from a bridge into a river.