George Washington Palmer’s sister, Nantie, married Francis (Frank) Marion Imboden.  Frank was the brother of Confederate General John Daniel Imboden, who figured large in the development of the coal industry in Wise and Lee Counties, Virginia, and then developed the “Virginia Creeper” Railroad from his company town at Damascus.

           George Palmer brought Frank to work for him in Saltville.  Frank had responsibility for the development of the proposed Norfolk and Cincinnati Railroad in 1882.  It was to start at Wytheville, where it could serve the Lead Mines, and Zinc Mines at Austinville, and to join the Norfolk and Western Railroad near Abingdon after having passed through Saltville.  The Imbodens and Palmers were involved with the bankrupt iron and steel businesses in Bristol, which in the Twentieth Century had become Bristol Steel.  Frank, who died in 1929, and his wife likely were still in Bristol when they died, as they are buried in the East Hill Cemetery there. 

           W. A. Stuart must have been sliding into poor health, because in 1891 Palmer obtained a promissory note from the Wytheville Bank with which to buy Stuart out.  Stuart died in 1892 and is buried in the Elizabeth Cemetery, and the sale was finalized in 1893.  George Washington Palmer died in 1904, and is buried in the Emory and Henry Cemetery next to the Confederate dead and the Black homicide victims of the Battle of Saltville. 

           That omnipresent “group of northern capitalists” that had always been associated with Palmer and his Saltville endeavors bought out all his interests in 1892 and began the conversion of the Salt Works into a modern chemical plant under the name of Mathieson Alkali Works.

     

     Francis (Frank) Marion Imboden