Interesting, you know I think the literature around here has a much earlier death date attributed to him, though I wouldnʻt be surprised to find out that weʻre wrong. Henry Palmer is a fairly well known name in Hawaiʻi among the environmental/conservationist community. He worked under Lord Rothschild with a man named George C. Munro collecting birds in Hawaiʻi. Munro was from New Zealand and later was a rancher (who coincidentally worked for/with my ancestors at one point). We owe a lot of our knowledge of Hawaiʻis natural environment to those men, many of the species that they discovered are now extinct or very rare. There are a couple of birds actually that are named after Palmer too. His field notes are generally considered lost, and I donʻt think we know a whole lot about him in general. If you ever find anything heʻs written I think a lot of people here would be VERY interested in seeing it, should your family chose to release that information of course. If his field notes or diaries survived they might give us invaluable insight to the nature of the species that he and Munro discovered, I think.
I had no idea that he had descendants... is it true that he was murdered? Also, Ive sent you a message on here with my email address if you want to contact me more directly.