Paul Palmer was the founder of a couple of General Baptists. Palmer started several early Baptist churches in North Carolina, including the first known Baptist church in the state. It is not certain if he was Calvinian or Arminian. His home church was the Welch Tract Church which was Calvinist.

Life

Palmer's wife Joanna was the stepdaughter of Benjamin Laker, who emigrated to the Carolinas in the 1680s from England where he had been an associate of English General Baptist theologian, Thomas Grantham

Thomas Grantham

Sir Thomas Grantham was an English tobacco trader and naval officer, commander of the naval fleet of the British East India Company. In 1684 he was sent to Bombay by the King of England to put down an insurrection led by the Company, who had set up a parallel government and assumed wide authority...

, a signer of the 1663 General Baptists' Standard Confession of Faith. Grantham would later write another Confession of Faith where he was decidedly Calvinistic. According to Elder John T. Albritton:

[Palmer] was said to have been a native of Maryland, was baptized in Delaware, and ordained in Connecticut. He was some time in New Jersey, and removed thence to Maryland, and thence to Perquimans County, N. C. He belonged to the General Baptists, and was actively engaged in the work of the ministry for many years in this State, traveling over a large portion of Eastern Carolina, winning converts wherever he went.

While in Maryland, Palmer served the First Baptist Church in Baltimore County. Around 1727 Palmer founded North Carolina's first Baptist church at Shiloh, North Carolina (then called Perquimans) in Camden County. Palmer and his wife Joanna were indicted by the colonial courts in North Carolina for their ministry. It is generally accepted that Palmer died in 1747. However, no one knows what actually happened to Palmer and it is certain that he never started a denomination.