page_title: John Pierpont
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: John Pierpont / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of John Pierpont (1785-1866) drawn by Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) in Baltimore, Maryland, USA in May, 1821. Pencil on cream wove paper. 7 11/16 x 6 3/8 inches (196 x 162 mm). Part of the Morgan Family Collection at The Morgan Library &amp; Museum: https://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/143200
context_page_description: John Pierpont was an American poet, who was also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister. His most famous poem is The Airs of Palestine.
context_section_description: Born in 1785 in Litchfield, Connecticut, John Pierpont had careers as a tutor, attorney, merchant, and minister. He graduated from Yale College in 1804. In 1814 he started a dry goods business with his brother in-law Joseph Lord and lifelong friend, John Neal. After a stint in debtor's prison as a result of the failure of the "Pierpont, Lord, and Neal" dry goods store chain in 1815, Pierpont sent his wife and children to live with her family in Connecticut, pawned the family silver, and isolated himself in Baltimore until he had produced “The Airs of Palestine.” Sale of the copyright in 1816 paid for his move to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  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 (1819-1845). During his tenure, Pierpont was instrumental in establishing Boston's English Classical School in 1821 and gained national recognition as an educator. He published two of the better-known early school readers in the United States, The American First Class Book (1823) and The National Reader (1827). However, Pierpont's latter years at the Hollis Street Church were characterized by controversy. His social activism for temperance and abolition angered some parishioners, and after a long public battle, he resigned in 1845.
  After his resignation, Pierpont served as pastor of a Unitarian church in Troy, New York (1845–1849), and then led the First Parish Church (Unitarian) in Medford, Massachusetts (1849–1856). He 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. After two weeks' service as a 76-year-old military chaplain with the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, Pierpont was given an appointment in the Treasury Department in Washington, which he held from 1861 until his death. He died at Medford, Massachusetts in 1866.
  Pierpont's sixteen-page obituary on the front page of the Atlantic Monthly was written by John Neal, his ex-business partner of fifty years earlier who later became an influential critic, writer, and lecturer, and who had named his second-oldest son (John Pierpont Neal) after Pierpont in 1847.
caption: John Pierpont in 1821 by Rembrandt Peale
exif: {"Image Copyright": "The Morgan Library & Museum"}