Upon graduating from Yale in 1804, Pierpont became a tutor in South Carolina and became the author of two successful school readers. As a Unitarian abolitionist, he became minister of the prestigious Hollis Street Church, Boston, for 25 years until a few persistent parishioners, who were wealthy pro-slavery rum merchants, forced his resignation in 1845. Later, he served as minister in Troy, New York and Medford, Massachusetts.

A granite marker in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, celebrates his life as “Poet, Preacher, Philosopher, Philanthropist.”

John Pierpont’s grandson was J. P. Morgan, powerful financier of industrial America.