Plaque provided by the Medford Historical Society. Plaque commemorating the authorship of the song “Jingle Bells” by James Pierpont at the Simpson Tavern (now 19 High Street) in Medford, Massachusetts. Several months after the death of his first wife in 1856, the songwriter married a daughter of Savannah’s mayor and left the two children from his first marriage back in the North with their grandfather. Returning home several years later no wealthier than when he left, Pierpont departed from his family again in 1853 to become the organist at a Unitarian church in Savannah, Georgia, that was pastored by his brother. When the California Gold Rush struck in 1849, Pierpont left his wife and children behind in Massachusetts while he chased riches in the West.
At the age of 14, he ran off from boarding school, joined the crew of a whaling ship and spent nearly a decade at sea. From an early age, James Lord Pierpont sought adventures far away from his family in Boston. The “Jingle Bells” composer was the son of a fiercely abolitionist Unitarian minister, Reverend John Pierpont. The commemorative plaque for James Lord Pierpont and his “Jingle Bells” in Savannah, Georgia, USA.