James Lord Pierpont

b. 25 April 1822, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, d. 5 August 1893, Winter Haven, Florida, USA. One of six children of the Rev. John Pierpont, a Unitarian pastor in Boston, and the former Mary Sheldon Lord. While attending a New Hampshire boarding school, Pierpont wrote to his mother, referring to riding through the snow in a sleigh, an experience that evidently stuck in his mind. In 1836 he ran away to sea, but by the mid-1840s was settled into marriage and raising a family. By the end of the decade, however, tempted by the gold rush, he had gone alone to San Francisco to start a business. When his business premises were destroyed by fire, he returned to his family. In 1853, he became organist and musical director of a Unitarian church in Savannah, Georgia, where his brother, the Rev. John Pierpont Jnr., was minister. His wife and children, however, remained in the north-east. Also in 1853, Pierpont’s first songs were published. These included ‘Kitty Crowe’, ‘The Colored Coquette’, ‘Ring The Bell, Fanny’, ‘Quitman Town March’ and ‘Wait, Lady, Wait’. In 1856 his wife died and the following year he remarried although his children stayed where they were, living with their grandfather. Pierpont and his new wife began raising a family and eventually they had three children. It was in 1857 that his childhood memory of a sleigh ride in the snow materialized as a published song entitled ‘One Horse Open Sleigh’, which was re-published in 1859 as ‘Jingle Bells, Or The One Horse Open Sleigh’. The song, which was not written as a Christmas song, was unsuccessful. When the war between the states began Pierpont enlisted in a unit that eventually became part of the Fifth Georgia Cavalry. Serving as a company clerk, he wrote inspiring songs for the Confederacy, among which were ‘Our Battle Flag’ and ‘We Conquer Or Die’. Concurrently, his father, who was too old to enlist, served as a chaplain with the Union Army. The war over, Pierpont settled in Georgia, teaching music in Valdosta, but by the end of the 1860s he was organist of the Presbyterian Church in Quitman, Florida, where he also taught at the Quitman Academy, retiring as the head of the Musical Department. A nephew of his was the financier J. Pierpont Morgan. It was not until after Pierpont’s death that his most famous song achieved success, and became irrevocably attached to Christmas.