Palmier Cemetery was established in 1783 on Palmier Hill on land donated by Benjamin and Joseph Ogle, part of the Ogle Estate, and became the oldest cemetery in the Columbia precinct. Because of flooding in the area, it was located on a hill, and it consists of approximately six acres. About 400 names are listed in its burial register, though earlier burials may have gone unrecorded, and stones dating to the mid-1780s can still be found. The cemetery took its name from the Palmier family, French-Canadians from Quebec who moved to the Columbia area and lived near the creek south of the cemetery that became known as Palmier Creek; it is claimed that the family settled there in the 1650s. In 1783, James Piggott traveled the Kaskaskia Trail with George Rogers Clark and his militiamen, and by 1787 several of Piggott's friends had followed, so that 17 families had settled in the area by 1790. By the late 1800s, family names among local inhabitants included Ogle, Palmier, Carr, Divers, Morgan, Lanceford, Payne, Phelps, Ramsey, Sharpe, and Wilson, and many of these names appear on gravestones there. In January of 1926, Columbia American Legion Post 581 became trustee of the cemetery, which had become so neglected that members used axes rather than mowers to cut down trees hiding the monuments. The cemetery is now cared for by volunteers. In 1976, American Legion Post 581 and the Monroe County Historical Society erected a pillar at the entrance to honor early pioneers and patriots of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Black Hawk War, Mexican-American War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korean War, and Vietnam War, and the cemetery contains burials of veterans from several of those conflicts.