page_title: Jereboam O. Beauchamp
section_title: Courtship of Anna Cooke
hierarchical_section_title: Jereboam O. Beauchamp / Courtship of Anna Cooke
caption_attribution_description: English: Anna Cooke-Beauchamp, wife of Jereboam O. Beauchamp Taken from The life of Jeroboam O. Beauchamp&#160;: who was hung at Frankfort, Kentucky, for the murder of Col. Solomon P. Sharp (1850), p. 2 published by D'Unger &amp; Co. (Frankfort, Kentucky)
context_page_description: Jereboam Orville Beauchamp was an American lawyer who murdered the Kentucky legislator Solomon P. Sharp; the crime is known as the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy. In 1821, Sharp had been accused in Bowling Green, Kentucky by Anna Cooke of fathering her illegitimate child; it was stillborn. Sharp denied paternity, and public opinion favored him. In 1824, Beauchamp married Cooke, who was seventeen years older than he. She asked him to kill Sharp to defend her honor.
  When Sharp campaigned in 1825 for a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives, opponents revived the story of his alleged illegitimate child by Cooke. They distributed campaign literature claiming the child was mulatto. Enraged, Beauchamp renewed his intention to avenge his wife's honor. In the early morning of November 7, 1825, he tricked Sharp to open the door at his home in Frankfort, and fatally stabbed him.
  Beauchamp was convicted of the murder and sentenced to hang. The morning of the execution, he and his wife attempted a double suicide by stabbing themselves with a knife she had smuggled into prison. She died from the attempt; he did not.
context_section_description: Beauchamp left Bowling Green to live at his father's plantation in Simpson County, Kentucky, where he convalesced from an illness. He learned that Cooke had become a recluse nearby at her mother's plantation after her public disgrace. Having heard from a mutual friend about her beauty and accomplishments, he decided to meet Cooke. At first, she rejected all attention, but gradually received Beauchamp under his guise of borrowing books from her library. The two eventually became friends, and, in 1821, began courting. Beauchamp was eighteen years old; Cooke was at least thirty-five.
  When he proposed marriage that year, Cooke told Beauchamp she would marry him on the condition that he kill Sharp. Beauchamp consented. Against Cooke's advice, Beauchamp traveled immediately to the capital of Frankfort, where Sharp had recently been appointed attorney general by the governor.
caption: Courting Anna Cooke, Beauchamp promised to kill Solomon Sharp for having dishonored her
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