John Pierpont, an American poet, born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785, died in Med-ford, Mass., Aug. 27, 1866. He graduated at Yale college in 1804, and in 1805 went to South Carolina as a private tutor. Returning to Connecticut in 1809, he studied law in the school at Litchfield, and settled at Newbury port, Mass., where he delivered before the Washington benevolent society his poem of " The Portrait." He afterward unsuccessfully tried mercantile pursuits in Boston and Baltimore. In 1816 he published at Baltimore "Airs of Palestine," a poem, and soon after began the study of theology, completing his course in the Harvard divinity school. In 1819 he was ordained minister of the Hollis street Congregational church in Boston. He was an ardent advocate of various reforms, which led to his retirement from his church in' Boston in 1845. He then became pastor of the Unitarian church in Troy, N. Y., and in 1849 of the first Congregational church in Medford, Mass., which charge he resigned in 1856. On the outbreak of the civil war in 1861 he entered the army as chaplain of a Massachusetts regiment, but soon received an appointment in the treasury department at Washington, which office he retained until his death.

In 1840 he published "Airs of Palestine, and other Poems." At the Litchfield centennial celebration of 1851 he delivered a long poem. He published several school readers, and about 20 sermons and addresses.