1804 .
JOHN PIERPONT died at West Medford, Mass., August 27, 1866, aged 81 years. He was the son of James and Elizabeth (Collins) Pierpont, and was born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785.
In 1805 he went to South Carolina, as private tutor in the family of Col. William Alston, and remained four years. On his return, in 1809, he studied law in the School at Litchfield, was admitted to the bar in Essex Co., Mass., in 1812, and opened an office in Newburyport. His profession proving, in consequence of the war, unremunerative, he engaged in "mercantile business, first in Boston and then in Baltimore, but in this also was unsuccessful. In 1818 he entered the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the next year, April 14, was ordained Pastor of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. During the later years of his long pastorate, by his bold advocacy of the Anti-Slavery, Temperance and other reforms, he aroused the opposition of a portion of his parish, and in 1845, after a protracted controversy, he requested a dismissal. He was then settled as the first pastor of the Unitarian Church in Troy, N. Y., and four years later was called to the First Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Medford, Mass. On the breaking out of the rebellion, though already past seventy-five, he promptly offered his services, and was appointed by Gov. Andrew chaplain of the 22d Mass. regiment. But his strength soon gave way under the hardship and exposure of the service, and he accepted a clerkship in the Treasury Department, which he held until his death.
In 1835-6 he traveled in Europe and the East.
In 1840 he published a volume of poems, under the title of "Airs of Palestine and other Poems." During, the later years of his life he was a believer in the doctrines of Spiritualism.
He was married, Sept. 23,1810, to Miss Mary Sheldon Lord, of Litchfield, by whom he had six children. She died at Medford, Aug. 23,1855.
He was again married, Dec. 8, 1857, to Mrs. Harriet L. Fowler, daughter of Archibald Campbell, Esq., of Pawling, Dutchesa Co., N. Y., who survives him.
