Author: Trumbull, John
Biography:
TRUMBULL, John (1750-1831: ANBO)
Son of the Rev. John Trumbull and his wife Sarah Whitman, he was born in Westbury (renamed Watertown) CT. Taught at home by his parents, he passed the admission examination for Yale when he was seven but had to wait six years before he could actually attend. After graduating in 1767, he tutored at Yale and taught school in Wethersfield CT, where he wrote his first popular poem, The Triumph of Dulness (1772). He studied law in the Boston office of John Adams, was called to the bar, and thereafter combined legal work with literary avocations. In 1776 he married Sarah Hubbard, with whom he settled in Hartford and had four children. He held various civic and political positions including State Attorney (1789-95) and finally was appointed judge (1801-19). Of McFingal, his most successful book, WorldCat records 194 editions between 1782 and 2018. Trumbull became a leader among the "Hartford Wits" or "Connecticut Wits," a group of political satirists active in the 1790s that included Joel Barlow, Theodore Dwight, Timothy Dwight, Richard Alsop, and Lemuel Hopkins (qq.v.). Yale awarded him an LLD in 1818. After he was removed from the bench upon a change of administration, however, and suffering financially, he moved to Detroit in 1825, where he died six years later and was buried in Elmwood Cemetery. (ANBO 27 Nov. 2020; Appleton; WorldCat; ancestry.com 27 Nov. 2020) HJ