Fanny Purdy Palmer was an American author, poet, journalist, lecturer, social activist, and clubwoman. She was born in New York City, New York, on July 11, 1839, the only child of Henry and Mary Catherine Sharp Purdy, who descended on her father’s side from Capt. Purdy, of the British army, who was killed in the Battle of White Plains, and a member of whose family was among the early settlers of Westchester County, New York. On the maternal side, Palmer descended from the Shams, a family of Scotch origin settled in Albany, New York, about 1750 and having descendants for four generations residing in New York City.

Palmer had the advantage of an excellent early education, acquired in part in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Eggertsville, a suburb of Buffalo, New York, and later in Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, New York. On October 7, 1862, she married Dr. William H. Palmer, Surgeon of the Third New York Cavalry. She accompanied him to the seat of the civil war, there continuing her literary work during the four years that ensued, with short stories and poems for Harper’s periodicals and The Galaxy and letters to various newspapers from North Carolina and Virginia. In 1867, Dr. and Mrs. Palmer moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where they had two children. Grantville and Henrietta. During those years, she was continuously identified with all the prominent measures for the advancement of women and with many philanthropic and educational movements. From 1876 to 1884, she served as a member of the Providence school committee. She was secretary of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association for several years. From 1891-92, she was president of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union, and from 1884 to 1894, she was the president of the Rhode Island Women’s Club. In 1895, she was elected auditor at the Second Biennial Meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, an organization comprising 600  women’s clubs and more than a million members in the U.S. As President of the Short Story Club the following year, she attended the Third Biennial Meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.

Her public work was accompanied by systematic private study habits and professional literary employment involving regular work on one or two weekly newspapers. Palmer affiliated with various parlor clubs and reading circles, and her own reading, especially in philosophy and history, gave her a mental discipline and a wide range of culture. She was appointed factory inspector of Rhode Island in 1895 and served in that capacity for three years, while her interests were greatly centered on the compulsory education law for children under 14. She took a special interest in popularizing the study of American history, having herself prepared and given a series of “Familiar Talks on American History” as a branch of the educational work of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. She was one of the managers of the Providence Free Kindergarten Association and served as secretary of a society organized to secure the educational privileges of Brown University for women.

She was the author of a volume of short stories, A Dead Level and Other Episodes (Buffalo, 1892), as well as A List of Rhode Island Literary Women (1893); California and Other Sonnets(1909); Dates and Days in Europe By an American resident in London (1915); and Outpost Message.

Palmer died in 1923. In 2020, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.

For additional reading:

Outpost Message by Fanny Purdy Palmer With a Biographical Sketch by Her Daughter, 1924.

A List of Rhode Island Literary Women, (1726-1892,) With Some Account of Their Work, 1893

California and Other Sonnets, 1909

Dates and Days in Europe By an American resident in London, 1915