Lucinda Palmer

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Gloucester Co., VA

Date of Birth:

19 September 1888

Place of Death:

Gloucester Co., VA

Date of Death:

11 August 1918

Place of Burial:

Sassafras, VA

Cemetery Name:

Bethel Baptist Church Cemetery

My Father owns a home of his own, He has thirty acres of land, which he has payed for in full. He has five head of cattle and one horse, my Father’s occupation mostly is farming, he raises on his farm several kinds of vegetables such as sweet potatoes, fresh potatoes, cabbages, beans, corn, wheat, oats, peas, snaps, beets and turnips.
- Lucinda Palmer to Alice Longfellow, 15 December 1896. Alice Mary Longfellow Papers.

Lucinda Palmer was born to Polly Jones and William Henry Harrison Palmer in 1878, the first of at least twelve children. Her parents worked on a farm, earning enough to purchase their own home and farmland in Gloucester County, Virginia. Palmer’s public school teachers encouraged her to go to Hampton; she worked for two years to save for her education, “as my Father and Mother had so many younger children than I, and so they were not able to send me to Hampton at once, so I had to work earn money enough to come to Hampton.”

Following her education at Hampton, Palmer became a school teacher near her home in Gloucester County, VA, and lived in her father’s household. She died in 1918, at the age of 29.