276 OBITUARY. 
filled until the company was taken over by the Great Western Power Company in 1912, 
when he went with the combined companies as general manager. In 1912 he constructed 
what is known as the Lake Almanor Project in Plumas County, and which is today the chief 
reservoir of the Great Western Power Company. 
Mr. Naphtaly was also one of the projectors and also the first vice-president of the Oak- 
land and Antioch Railway, now known as the San Francisco and Sacramento Railroad Com- 
pany, and was largely responsible for the engineering and construction features of this 
project until 1917. 
In 1917, together with other business associates, he organized the Los Angeles Ship- 
building and Dry Dock Company and took an active part in the construction of the plant at 
San Pedro, Calif., and served this company as vice-president and general manager until 
December, 1921. A large measure of the success which the Los Angeles Shipbuilding and 
Dry Dock Company has enjoyed was due to his engineering skill and business acumen. 
In January, 1922, he again entered the services of the Great Western Power Company 
in San Francisco and was vice-president and general manager until his health failed and he 
was forced to retire. After an illness of three months, he passed away in San Francisco, 
June 25, 1922. Mr. Naphtaly became a member of this Society in 1921. 
NICHOLAS FLETCHER PALMER 
MEMBER 
Mr. Palmer was born in the City of New York, February 26, 1847. He was educated 
in Clark Street Grammar School, Eighth Ward, from which school he graduated in 1861 
to the “Free Academy,” now known as the College of the City of New York. 
He commenced his business career in Wall Street with a firm of bankers and brokers 
in 1864 and rapidly made himself well and favorably known in financial circles, but in 1873 
his father-in-law, George W. Quintard, a well-known citizen of the City of New York and 
an incorporator of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, persuaded Mr. 
Palmer to join him as a partner in the Quintard Iron Works at the foot of East Twelfth 
Street, where, during the Civil War, were built a number of the gunboats. of that period, 
including the monitor Onondaga. 
When the so-called ““New Navy” of iron and steel ships was inaugurated, the Quin- 
tard Iron Works, under the management of Mr. Palmer, the firm having become N. F. 
Palmer, Jr., & Co., built for the United States Navy the machinery of the armored cruiser 
Maine (subsequently destroyed in Havana Harbor, 1898), and the gunboats Marblehead, 
Concord and Bennington, as well as for many privately owned steamships, public water 
works and cement works. In 1904 Mr. Palmer changed the firm into the corporation, Quin- 
tard Iron Works Company, which was finally disposed of in 1917, 
In 1898, Mr. Palmer, besides being the head of the Quintard Iron Works, became, as 
well, the president of the Leather Manufacturer’s Bank, of which his father had previously 
been president for many years. Finding the two occupations too onerous, he resigned as 
president of the bank in 1902, remaining, however, to be an influential director for a number 
of years of the Mechanics and Metals National Bank, which succeeded the Leather Manu- 
facturer’s Bank. In 1901 he founded the firm of Palmer & Co., bankers and brokers. 
Among many other important matters in which he was much interested, he was a trus- 
