John Pierpont (April 6, 1785 – August 27, 1866) was an American poet, who was also successively a teacher, lawyer, merchant, and Unitarian minister.

[2] In 1814 he started a dry goods business with his brother in-law, Joseph Lord, and lifelong friend, John Neal.

[6] Neal gave the poem a poor review in his 1824–25 critical work American Writers and the two men stopped corresponding for a year afterward.

[7] 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).

He 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.

In addition, he is probably the anonymous "gentleman" who co-authored The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved (1844), attributed to W. H. Smith, an actor and stage manager at Moses Kimball's Boston Museum (theatre).

Pierpont's many published sermons include, among others, The Burning of the Ephesian Letters (1833), Jesus Christ Not a Literal Sacrifice (1834), New Heavens and a New Earth (1837), Moral Rule of Political Action (1839), National Humiliation (1840), and A Discourse on the Covenant with Judas (1842).

[10] 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 (1989).

His poem "The Tocsin", written just after the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall (Philadelphia), was published in The Liberator, the country's leading anti-slavery paper.