Joseph Palmer

Who was Joseph Palmer?

Joseph Palmer was a member of the Fruitlands commune and an associate of Louisa May Alcott and other Transcendentalists.

A farmer from NoTown, a village on the outskirts of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Palmer was a veteran of the War of 1812. In 1830 Palmer was a successful Yankee farmer, but was by no means a typical one. Possibly influenced in childhood by a bearded itinerant evangelist named Lorenzo Dow, Palmer took to wearing a long beard in the 1820s. Few men in the United States wore beards after about 1720, and Palmer was considered eccentric and slovenly. Nicknamed “the old Jew”, he was regularly harassed and questioned about his insistence on wearing a beard. A prominent Fitchburg minister once accosted him: "Palmer, why don't you shave and not go around looking like the devil?" Palmer replied, "Mr. Trask, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulfurous regions with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard not unlike mine."

One day early in May 1830, four men armed with scissors and razors attacked Palmer outside a Fitchburg hotel and attempted to shave him.