Austin N. Palmer

The Cedar Rapids Business College was just a few years old when textbook author Samuel Goodyear bought it in 1879. Businesses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries heavily relied on people with handwriting skills. One of those talented calligraphers was Austin Palmer, who had arrived from New Hampshire in 1877. He was employed as a contract writer for the Iowa Railroad Land Co.

Palmer shared a back room at the Grand Hotel in those early years with a young entrepreneur named Samuel G. Armstrong.

Palmer found the business college interesting and often sat in on penmanship classes.

Before too long, he was teaching penmanship as well as bookkeeping and commercial law. By 1885, he had purchased a half interest in the college along with publication of Goodyear's textbooks. The partnership didn't pan out, so by 1890, Palmer took full control of the school, while Goodyear kept his copyrights and the publishing business.

In 1884, Palmer began the Western Penman publication, which circulated around the globe, promoting his method of practical business handwriting. Palmer thought the current system of chirography was too slow and laborious to be an efficient tool in business.

By 1900, he launched his Palmer Method of Handwriting and began an earnest campaign to schools by starting summer school classes for penmanship teachers from all over the country. His view was that the traditional method of teaching penmanship using copy books never taught anyone how to write. Starting with an exposition in Cedar Rapids, his dogged promotion of his own method virtually eliminated copy books in 15 years.

He set up a display at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and attracted the attention of a New York school superintendent. Soon his push-pull method, which involved a free-flowing movement of the entire arm while writing, was accepted in the East and progressed from there into public, parochial, high and commercial schools in the U.S. and Canada.

The City Council granted a tax exemption to Palmer Building Co. in February 1905 to erect a three-story building on the corner of Second Avenue and Fifth Street. The A.N. Palmer Co. building housed the Palmer School of Penmanship and Bookkeeping and Palmer's publishing company offices. Rose Kos, a graduate of the Cedar Rapids Business College, was one of its first employees. She started out by typing and sending 5,000 letters that promoted the Palmer Method. She remained with the company until its main office in Cedar Rapids moved to Chicago in 1954.

With the success of his company, Palmer and his wife, Sadie, moved to Manhattan in 1907, but always considered Cedar Rapids their home. Palmer acquired the nickname "Pushin' Palmer" during the height of his popularity in the 1920s.

The Palmer Method was used in schools well into the 1960s and at one point was taught in 80 percent of the nation's schools.

The Business College closed its doors in 1975, while the A.N. Palmer Co. dissolved in 1988.

Austin Palmer died in 1927. Sadie moved back to Cedar Rapids and lived in the Ausadie apartment building they had built on First Avenue East until her death in 1945. They are buried together in the Chapel of Memories at Cedar Memorial.

History of penmanship

Nan Wood Graham says the "History of Penmanship" paintings by her brother, Grant Wood, were ordered by Palmer Method Co. for the Chicago "A Century of Progress International Exposition." Wood finished the five paintings in May 1933. Each one depicted a period of writing history: Stone age, medieval monk, Roman wax tablet, pioneer woman with a quill pen and modern method of writing. Only one of the five, each measuring 32 by 42 inches, was signed. They had been sold when the Palmer company in Chicago closed. They were offered to Cedar Rapids in 1963 by the Chicago Art Galleries, provided they would be placed in a permanent gallery. At that time, they were valued at $25,000. The paintings remained in Iowa, just not in Cedar Rapids. Four of them are part of the Figge Museum collection in Davenport. The fifth is at the Waterloo Museum of Art.

Sample of Palmer Method penmanship invented by Austin N. Palmer Austin N. Palmer, inventor of the Palmer Method of penmanship The Gazette Ausadie Building, 845 First Ave. SE, is a well-preserved apartment building built by Austin and Sadie Palmer in 1923 as a business venture and to serve as their residence while in Cedar Rapids. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. State Historical Society of Iowa Students are participating in a penmanship drill in a Palmer classroom. Palmer often reminded his students, "A few minutes in the right way are worth hours of practice in the wrong way."