Elsie (Miller) Palmer, 1871-1971

Elsie (Miller) Palmer was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio, on March 20, 1871. The daughter of J. Peery Miller, professor of history at Antioch College and later secretary to the faculty, she was one of four sisters and four brothers. Her mother seems to have died of tuberculosis when EMP was a child. Her father, in his later years, lived with his daughters in turn and pursued his interests in family history, compiling a genealogy of the Miller family.

All the Miller children, except one son attended Antioch College; all four sisters married their classmates. EMP married Rev. Stephen G. Palmer in about 1898. SGP (born July 2, 1865) first attended Bucknell University and then transferred to Antioch. He later taught Latin and English there, was a teacher and high school principal in Northborough, Mass., and taught in Belmont, Mass and at Watha Industrial School in North Carolina. He served as Unitarian minister in Dighton, Mass, 1916-1924, and later in Windsor, Vt. He died in 1937.

Throughout her life, EMP maintained a steady stream of correspondence on domestic topics with family and friends. In the last years of her life, she lived with her daughter Lucile in Attleboro, Mass. Although EMP suffered from poor health, she lived to be 100, dying in October 1971.

Lucile (Palmer) Cavender, daughter of SGP and EMP, was born in Greenville, Ohio on May 12, 1899. She received her M.L.S. from Simmons College School of Library Science (1921) and went on to a position at the library of Adelbert College, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. In 1923, she was appointed librarian of Middleboro (Mass.) Public Library and subsequently librarian in Attleboro. LPC married Frank L. Cavender in 1940. He died in 1986. E. Gertrude (Palmer) Gaines ("Peggy"), younger daughter of SGP and EGP, was born in 1907. She worked as a summer camp counselor and finished Antioch College in 1929 after five years of study and work in retailing, her concentration. Part of this period she spent at New York University. After graduation she married F. Loyd Gaines, a fellow student at Antioch, and moved to California. It is believed that EGPG contracted hepatitis and died in the late 1940s. The Gaineses' daughter, Marcia, earned a Ph.D. degree in geology and married David Rottman in 1961. Now divorced, MGR works for Exxon.

From the guide to the Papers, 1888-1966, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)