William Palmer was born on October 17, 1819 in Adair County, Kentucky, United States. He was a great-grandson of David Jones, who emigrated from Wales to Maryland, and the son of William Jones, who fought with Jackson at New Orleans. His mother was Mary, daughter of Maj. Robert Powell, a Virginian who fought in the Revolutionary War. The death of her husband left her with nine children to rear.
Young Jones grew up on the farm.
At the age of twenty Jones began to study medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute. He took his degree in 1840 from the Medical College of Ohio (Cincinnati), and later received another degree from the Memphis Medical College.
Jones began practice medicine at once in Edmonton, Kentucky, but within a year removed to Bowling Green in the same state and in 1849 removed permanently to Nashville.
In addition to his medical practice, Jones founded, in 1852, and conducted for some years a popular journal, the Parlor Visitor. During the period 1853-56, he was also co-editor of the Southern Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences, and edited the Tennessee School Journal. In 1858 he was a cofounder of the Shelby Medical College, where he held the chair of materia medica.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, he chose to support the Union, and was placed in charge of the Academy Hospital, the first Federal hospital to be established in Nashville. From 1862 to 1869 he was superintendent of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane. In 1876 he was made president of the faculty of the Nashville Medical College, which three years later became the medical department of the University of Tennessee. He was president of the medical faculty for twenty years, or nearly to the time of his death, and held also the chair of medicine and the chair of psychology and mental hygiene.
In 1873 he was elected a state senator and worked especially for the enactment of a public-school law which sought to end racial discrimination, and to secure normal schools and additional insane asylums. Jones was but little known to the general medical public, and the three series of the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon-General's Library contain no mention of any work from his pen nor of any biographical sketch or portrait - the sole reference to him being a mention of his editorship of the Southern Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences.
He died in 1897.
William Palmer Jones was the founder of popular journal, the Parlor Visitor, co-founder of the Shelby Medical College. He also was superintendent of the Tennessee Hospital for the Insane, and in this capacity was instrumental in getting an appropriation for erecting near Nashville a special institution, the Central Hospital for the Insane, for colored patients. Besides, he was prominent in the local political life, was postmaster of Nashville for many years, and was on the city council and board of education.
Jones was a member of the American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane.
In 1851 he was married to Jane Elizabeth Currey, by whom he had nine children.
