Joel Palmer was born in 1810 in Canada and grew up in upstate New York. He received only a few months of formal education, and at age 13 his parents indentured him to a family in Le Ray, New York, where he lived until the age of 17. He then moved to Pennsylvania. In 1830, he married Catherine Coffee. After Coffee's death, he remarried to Sarah Ann Derbyshire (1815-1891) in 1836; the couple had eight children. That same year, they moved near Laurel, Indiana, where Palmer worked as a contractor on a canal-building project and served two terms in the Indiana Legislature.

In 1845, Palmer traveled to Oregon, where he scouted out what would become the Barlow Road on Mount Hood. He described his experiences in a diary that was published in 1847 as "Journals of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains," which served as a guidebook on equipment and routes for emigrants to Oregon. He returned to Indiana in 1846 and then emigrated to Oregon with his family. In 1849, the family took residence in the Yamhill Valley, where Palmer founded the town of Dayton.

In Oregon, Palmer became a political leader who held significant roles in relations between Euro-American emigrants and Native peoples. He was a commissary general of the volunteer militia during the Cayuse War, and then a peace commissioner to the Cayuse. Later, he was territorial superintendent of Indian Affairs, then federal superintendent for Indian Affairs for the Oregon Territory from 1853 to 1856, when he resigned. During his three years as superintendent, Palmer negotiated nine treaties, as well as two others in collaboration with Isaac Stevens. He also characterized Euro-Americans as instigators of many conflicts with Native people, which angered some emigrants to the region and led to his resignation.

Initially a Democrat, Palmer was an active Unionist during the U.S. Civil War and had changed his affiliation to the Republican Party by 1862. That same year, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives, where he became Speaker. In 1864, he was elected to the Oregon Senate. In 1870, he ran for governor of Oregon, but narrowly lost to Lafayette Grover.

In 1871, Palmer was appointed Indian agent at the Siletz Reservation, but he remained in that role for less than two years before resigning out of frustration with bureaucracy and his inability to assist the Siletz people. He died in 1881.

Source: "Joel Palmer (1810-1881)," by William L. Lang, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/palmer_joel_1810_1881_/; entry in "Dictionary of Oregon History," 2nd edition, 1989, edited by Howard McKinley Corning, page 190; vital records via Ancestry.com.