In “Historic
omissions” (April 6, 2017) I praised Carlinville’s John M. Palmer as a
memoirist. He published his Perrsonal Recollections: The Story of an Earnest
Life (Robert Clarke Company, Cincinnati) in 1901.
These days it’s hard to come by. It is in the collections of
the Illinois State Library, Brookens Library out at UIS and the Presidential
Library downtown. The general public can read it at Lincoln Library, which has
a non-circulating copy in its Sangamon Valley Collection.
If you crave books on paper, you can buy facsimile edition
from such outlets such as Amazon and Book Depository for about 30 bucks. Such
products can be of variable quality, however, and I can’t vouch for what’s available in
that form.
You can read it online via Google Books. Your best bet might
be to download it to your machine in any of the many formats offered by the Internet Archive.
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2017.
