Reverend Nathan Palmer (1900-2003) was a founder and community leader of the Briar Patch community, which has ties to the Gullah Geechee people and is located between Eulonia and Crescent.
Outside of serving as a minister to several churches in McIntosh County, Georgia, Palmer is one of the founders of the McIntosh Ring Shouters, a Gullah Geechee music group whose music illustrates the connection of West Africa to the enslaved population that lived along the coast together via music.
From the McIntosh Ring Shouters’s website
The ring shout is the genesis of African American music as it precedes spirituals, gospel, R&B, soul, hip-hop, and rap.
According to one of his great-grandsons I met the day I visited the Briar Patch community, his great-grandfather was one of the elders who helped build the Bolden Lodge. He told me his house was still standing. While it is overgrown and the details are hard to distinguish, tax records indicate it is the oldest home in the community, built in 1920. This date is close to the date of the Bolden Lodge, which highlights the importance of these structures to the creation of a historic community.
Reverend Palmer’s name lives on in the community he helped build with one of the roads being named after him.