Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Palmer, John (fl.1818)
PALMER, JOHN (fl. 1818), traveller, apparently a native of Lynn, Norfolk, sailed from Liverpool on 28 March 1817 on a visit to the United States and Canada. During the voyage he had for companions William Cobbett and his two sons. Soon after his return to England on 28 Feb. 1818, he published his ‘Journal of Travels in the United States of North America and in Lower Canada,’ 8vo, London, 1818. It contains particulars relating to the prices of land and provisions, remarks on the country and the people, an account of the commerce of the principal towns, and a description of a pair of sea-serpents that were said to have been seen off Marblehead and Cape Ann in 1817. A Dutch translation of the book appeared at Haarlem in 1820, 8vo. Sydney Smith, in noticing the ‘Journal’ in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for December 1818, p. 133, described it as having been written by a ‘plain man, of good sense and slow judgment.’
[Allibone's Dict. of Authors, ii. 1493; Appleton's Cyclop. of Amer. Biogr.]