John Trumbull

John Trumbull (1750–1831) was an American poet and lawyer, born in Watertown, Connecticut. He entered Yale as a child prodigy, later became a tutor there, and was a leading member of the Connecticut Wits. He trained in law under John Adams and practised in Hartford, serving also as a state judge.

His best-known work, M'Fingal (first part 1775, complete 1782), is a Hudibrastic mock-epic satirising a Tory squire in revolutionary Massachusetts. It was among the most widely read American poems of its age and went through dozens of editions.