John Trumbull (lawyer and poet)

John Trumbull (lawyer and poet) (1750-1831), American lawyer and poet, born in Westbury (now Watertown), Connecticut, and educated at Yale University. Trumbull wrote The Progress of Dulness (1772-1773), an attack on the educational system of his time, and the mock-epic poem M’Fingal (1775-1782), which satirized the British Loyalists during the American Revolution. From 1785 to 1800 he was the leader of a group of satirists known as the Hartford Wits. Trumbull had studied law in Boston with John Adams and after 1800 devoted himself primarily to legal and political matters. He served as judge of the Connecticut superior court from 1801 to 1819 and as judge of the state supreme court of errors from 1808 to 1819.