Pierpont, John, a Unitarian preacher, was born in Litchfield, Conn., April 6, 1785; graduated at Yale College in 1804. After spending some years as a teacher, lawyer, and merchant, he became a minister when about thirty-three years old, and in 1819 was installed as pastor of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, in Boston, where he remained twenty-one years. His strong antislavery and temperance utterances brought him under fire. From 1845 to 1849 he was pastor of the Unitarian Church at Troy, N. Y., and from 1849 to 1859, of the Unitarian Church at Medford, Mass. He was for a while a chaplain in the army during the Civil War, but was later in the government employ at Washington. He died August 27, 1866. His Poems and Hymns was published in 1840; second edition, 1854. About twenty of his hymns are found in Church hymnals.

O thou to whom in ancient time 12
On this stone, now laid with prayer 657