The New International Encyclopædia/Pierpont, John

PIERPONT, John (1785-1866). An American poet. He was born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785, and graduated from Yale College in 1804, after which he taught school for a few years. He then studied law and practiced at Newburyport, Mass. After unsuccessful business ventures in Boston and Baltimore, he studied theology in the Harvard Divinity School, and in 1819 was ordained over the Hollis Street Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston. His advocacy of anti-slavery, temperance, and other reforms caused his withdrawal from that parish in 1845, after which he became pastor of the Unitarian Church at Troy, N. Y., and of the First Church (Unitarian) at Medford, Mass. During the Civil War he was appointed, though seventy-six years old, as chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment, but was soon transferred to the United States Treasury Department, where he remained till his death at Medford, Mass., August 26, 1866. He published, among other volumes: Airs of Palestine (1816; republished and enlarged as Airs of Palestine, and Other Poems in 1840) and Anti-Slavery Poems (1843). Some lines on his dead son are also notable for their pathos. He was a genuine poet, though his work is rather slight.