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God Bless America—My Home Sweet Home
God Bless America—My Home Sweet Home is one of a recently discovered trove of roughly 400 gouache paintings by Stephen J. M. Palmer (1882–1965). Although Palmer’s death certificate states that he was born in New York State, no record of his birth exists there. Probably born in Illinois, he was documented living in a men’s lodging house in Minnesota by at least 1900. By 1910, he was staying in Eau Claire, Wisconsin with his mother and older brother. He spent his adult life, through the 1930s, moving around logging camps in the MidWest and died of a stroke in a Minnesota hospital in 1965. He is buried in a single plot at the Catholic Calvary Cemetery in Mankato, Minnesota. Most likely raised Roman Catholic, Palmer sustained a complicated connection to the Church by affiliation with fringe home-based worship groups and self-proclaimed visionaries, including Mary Ann Van Hoof (1909–1984), whose schismatic shrine still operates in Necedah, Wisconsin. These break-off sects provided a social network for Palmer, and he drew a small circle of faithful to listen to his own visions and prophecies, which he codified in the tenets of his Sacrificial Love Society. His middle initials “J.” and “M.”
stand for Jesus and Mary. |
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