Jereboam O. Beauchamp

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Jereboam O. Beauchamp murders Solomon P. Sharp
Jereboam O. Beauchamp murders Solomon P. Sharp

Jereboam Orville Beauchamp (September 6, 1802 – July 7, 1826) was an American lawyer, convicted murderer, and one of the central figures in the Beauchamp-Sharp Tragedy.

Jereboam Beauchamp was born September 6, 1802, the second son of Thomas and Sally (née Smithers) Beauchamp. He was educated at Dr. Benjamin Thurston's academy in Barren County, Kentucky until the age of sixteen. After briefly engaging in the profession of teaching, he returned to Thurston's school to assist him. After observing the lawyers practicing in Glasgow and Bowling Green, he determined to pursue a career in the legal profession.[1]

He began courting a woman who was sixteen years his senior named Ann Cooke and soon fell deeply in love with her. But she would only marry him on the condition that he kill a prominent figure, a former attorney-general of Kentucky, Colonel Solomon P. Sharp who had jilted her and slandered her name. It is believed that Colonel Sharp was the father of her illegitimate stillborn baby in 1820. One's honor and reputation were of great importance and she intended to redeem her good name at all costs.

Jereboam vowed he would avenge her, so in the Fall of 1821 he went to Frankfort, Kentucky to seek out Sharp and murder him. His plans failed and he returned home without completing his promise to Ann. In 1824, Jereboam was admitted to the bar, and in June, he and Ann were married.

During the legislative election of 1824, John V. Waring had conducted a smear campaign against Sharp by printing out handbills accusing him of seducing Ann Cook of Bowling Green, Kentucky and fathering an illegitimate child born to her in 1820. Jereboam, infuriated by these accusations about his wife and Sharp, vowed revenge, and in the early hours of November 7, 1825 he knocked on Colonel Solomon P. Sharps' door in Frankfort and fatally stabbed him after asking him if he was indeed Colonel Sharp.

Jereboam was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He and Ann persuaded his jailers to allow them to stay together in the cell. On July 5, 1826 they attempted a double suicide by taking laudanum. The attempt was unsuccessful and a guard was placed in their cell. On July 7, the day set for the hanging, they persuaded their guard to allow them some privacy. They then made a second suicide attempt, this time with a knife that Ann had sneaked in.

Jereboam was hustled off to the gallows, but was so weak from his wounds he had to be supported by two men before being hanged in Frankfort, Kentucky. Ann succumbed to her wounds at nearly the same time.[2]

They were buried in an embrace in the same coffin at Bloomfield, Kentucky, and a poem that Ann had written on the eve of their deaths adorns their double tombstone. The Beauchamp-Sharp Tragedy created a national sensation at the time, and has been the subject or inspiration for many books and story plots, the most famous of which are probably Edgar Allan Poe's Politian (1835) and Robert Penn Warren's World Enough and Time (1950).

A cousin, Noah Beauchamp, was hanged in 1842 for stabbing a man to death in Indiana. Another cousin, James Beauchamp Clark, was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919.

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  1. ^ Cooke, pp. 126–127
  2. ^ Lee, Murder on Madison

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Persondata
NAME Beauchamp, Jereboam O.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beauchamp, Jereboam Orville
SHORT DESCRIPTION executed murderer
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Kentucky, United States of America
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1826
PLACE OF DEATH Frankfort, Kentucky, United States of America
Languages