Excerpt from History of the Town of Palmer, Massachusetts, Early Known as the Elbow Tract: Including Records of the Plantation, District and Town, 1716-1889 The Records of the Plantation are well preserved and are quite full. The District and Town Records, though the volumes are all extant, are meager in details and provokingly incomplete. Matters of the utmost importance would be brought before the town for consideration, would be discussed in Town Meeting and referred to a committee, which committee would report. But the only record made by the clerk was the fact that said committee reported and the report was accepted, with no intimation what was the character of the report. It is likely that the report was placed on file; but the old files and papers have been largely used to kindle fires in the Town House. By the thoughtfulness and courage of Dr. W. H. Stowe some of these papers were saved, and have added great value to these annals; but the wanton waste of the larger part of these old town documents is highly reprehensible. And many of the family records and papers - in existence fifty years ago - have disappeared and no one knows how. Even the letter of the mother of John King, our earliest settler, cannot be found among any of his descendants. Fortunately a copy was made, and a transcript of this copy appears in this book. The several Church and Parish records are (or were) sufficiently full for denominational purposes, while the actors were upon the stage and their memories good, but they fail to answer important historical inquiries. Except for a period of ten years-17534763 - no records of the Presbyterian Church, which flourished for sixty years, have been found. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.