1. John Pierpont was an American poet, who was successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister.
14 Facts About John Pierpont
1. 2.
John Pierpont was the son of Elizabeth Pierpont and James Pierpont.
3.
John Pierpont graduated in 1804 from Yale College, and later from Litchfield Law School.
4.
John Pierpont began his religious work as a theology student in 1816, first in Baltimore and then at Harvard, afterwards accepting an appointment as pastor at the Hollis Street Church in Boston.
5.
John Pierpont published two of the better-known early school readers in the United States, The American First Class Book and The National Reader.
6.
John Pierpont ran for Massachusetts governor during the 1840s as a Liberty Party candidate, and in 1850 as a Free Soil Party candidate for the US House of Representatives.
7.
On September 12,1861, during the Civil War, 76-year-old John Pierpont enlisted as the Chaplain of the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at Camp Schouler.
8.
John Pierpont resigned his commission on November 5,1861 due to poor health, and was given an appointment in the Treasury Department in Washington, which he held from the end of 1861 until his death.
9.
John Pierpont gained a literary reputation with his book Airs of Palestine: A Poem, re-published in an anthology by the same name in 1840.
10.
John Pierpont's many published sermons include, among others, The Burning of the Ephesian Letters, Jesus Christ Not a Literal Sacrifice, New Heavens and a New Earth, Moral Rule of Political Action, National Humiliation, and A Discourse on the Covenant with Judas.
11.
John Pierpont's writings were anthologized widely in antislavery poetry collections, such as William Allen's Autographs of Freedom.
12.
John Pierpont did not write the song "Jingle Bells" as erroneously claimed by Robert Fulghum in his collection of essays It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It.
13.
John Pierpont was involved in women's rights issues and spoke about women's suffrage.
14.
In 1810, John Pierpont was married to Mary Sheldon Lord, a daughter of Mary Lord and Lynde Lord.