Background
Ray Palmer was born on November 12, 1808 in Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Judge Thomas Palmer and Susanna (Palmer) Palmer. He traced his descent back to William Palmer who came to Plymouth Colony in 1621.
Ray Palmer was born on November 12, 1808 in Little Compton, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Judge Thomas Palmer and Susanna (Palmer) Palmer. He traced his descent back to William Palmer who came to Plymouth Colony in 1621.
When only thirteen years old, Ray Palmer became a clerk in a drygoods store in Boston, and attended Park Street Congregational Church, where he was under the influence of Reverend Sereno E. Dwight. Having decided to enter the ministry, he spent three years preparing for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, and then entered Yale, where he was graduated in the class of 1830. He studied theology privately. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Union College in 1852.
Ray Palmer taught for several hours a day in a select school for girls in New York City (1830 - 1831), and then at a seminary for girls in New Haven. He was ordained and installed as pastor of the Congregational Church in Bath, Maine, July 22, 1835, where he remained for fifteen years. In 1847 he made a trip to Europe, sending back letters of travel which were published in the Christian Mirror, Portland.
From 1850 to 1866 he was the first pastor of the First Congregational Church in Albany, New York, and for the twelve years following, 1866 - 1878, he was the corresponding secretary of the American Congregational Union, later the Congregational Church Building Society. One of the principal objects of this organization was to give assistance in the building of meeting houses and parsonages, and during Palmer's incumbency more than six hundred of the former were erected. After 1870 he resided in Newark, and from 1881 to 1884 he was one of the associate pastors of the Bellevue Avenue Church. Methodical and of tireless industry, he found time in the midst of parish and secretarial duties to do much writing.
Among published prose works of Ray Palmer were Spiritual Improvement, or Aids to Growth in Grace (1839), reprinted as Closet Hours (1851), Doctrinal Text-book (1839), and others. He also contributed much to religious periodicals. A long poem, Home: or the Unlost Paradise, appeared in 1872.
It is as a hymn-writer, however, that he is best known. "My Faith Looks up to Thee, " which has been translated into many languages, was written soon after he graduated from college and included in Spiritual Songs for Social Worship by Thomas Hastings and Lowell Mason in 1832. Some of the other popular hymns which he wrote are "Away from Earth my Spirit Turns, " "And Is There, Lord, a Rest?" , "O Sweetly Breathe the Lyres Above, " and "Take Me, O My Father; Take Me. "
His death occurred at Newark from cerebral hemorrhage when he was in his seventy-ninth year on March 29 1887.
Ray Palmer was a man of transparent sincerity, simplicity of faith, and the cheerfulness and confidence which are rooted in untroubled religious convictions.
On October 3, 1832, Ray Palmer married Ann Maria, daughter of Marmaduke and Maria (Ogden) Waud of Newark, New Jersey.
