Background
He was born on April 6, 1785 in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States, the second of the ten children of James Pierpont, a clothier, by his wife, Elizabeth Collins.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format. Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship.
https://www.amazon.com/anti-slavery-poems-John-Pierpont/dp/B00485BSGS?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00485BSGS
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
https://www.amazon.com/Airs-Palestine-Poem-1785-1866-Pierpont/dp/1360157050?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1360157050
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Exercises-Recitation-Selected-Principally/dp/1363772252?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1363772252
He was born on April 6, 1785 in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States, the second of the ten children of James Pierpont, a clothier, by his wife, Elizabeth Collins.
He graduated from Yale College in 1804, in the same class with John C. Calhoun. Later he studied in the Litchfield Law School under Tapping Reeve and James Gould. In October 1818 he graduated from the Harvard Divinity School.
He assisted Azel Backus for a few months in an academy at Bethlehem, later went to South Carolina as tutor, 1805-09, in the household of William Alston, father of Joseph Alston.
Having been called to the bar in 1812, he opened a law office at Newburyport, Massachussets, and, in the leisure afforded by a total absence of clients, composed The Portrait (1812), a poem surcharged with Federalist sentiment, which he declaimed October 27, 1812, before the Washington Benevolent Society of Newburyport.
In 1814 he and his brother-in-law, Joseph L. Lord, went into the retail dry-goods business in Boston and soon took John Neal into the firm. They started a branch in Baltimore and for a while the venture flourished, but the dizzy fluctuations of wartime prices were more than they could cope with, and in 1815 the business collapsed. Still in Baltimore, Pierpont published the next year his beautifully executed Airs of Palestine (Baltimore, 1816), which was reprinted twice in Boston in 1817, and which put him for the time being in the front rank of American poets. Two later volumes, Airs of Palestine and Other Poems (1840) and The Anti-Slavery Poems of John Pierpont (1843), comprise the bulk of his verse.
He was ordained April 14, 1819 as minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. He edited two school readers, The American First Class Book (1823) and The National Reader (1827), which went through many editions and were the first American readers to include selections from Shakespeare; visited Europe and Palestine in 1835-36; published various sermons and lectures; and grew steadily in reputation as an eloquent, thoughtful minister.
He was vindicated by an ecclesiastical council before which he was tried in July 1841, but his enemies continued their campaign against him. Finally, with his back salary paid in full and all the honors on his side, he resigned in 1845. Subsequently he was pastor of the newly organized First Unitarian Society of Troy, New York, 1845-49, and of the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church of West Medford, Massachussets, 1849-58.
For two weeks of 1861 he was chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, but the post was too strenuous for his seventy-six years. From then until his death, which took place at Medford, he was a clerk in the Treasury Department at Washington. He died in 1866.
(This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
His penchant for reform was also growing steadily. He worked for the abolition of the state militia and of imprisonment for debt; became an enthusiastic propagandist for phrenology and spiritualism; and pressed to the forefront of the peace, the anti-slavery, and the temperance movements.
He was remembered as a man with more than a touch of genius.
On September 23, 1810 he married his fourth cousin, Mary Sheldon Lord, who bore him three sons and three daughters. His first wife having died on August 23, 1855, he married, on December 8, 1857, Harriet Louise (Campbell) Fowler of Pawling, New York, who survived him.