Beauchamp-Sharpe Tragedy of 1825

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
And I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Wilson. Today we are talking about a piece of I
guess you would call it a historical true crime that
reads like a tella novella. We're also going to hit
the two hundred year anniversary of this particular drama, which
involves a politician, a lawyer, and a woman perhaps connected
to both of them, and it unfolds as the story

(00:36):
of sexual scandal and political intrigue and ultimately leads to murder.
The details of the Beecham Sharp tragedy cannot all be verified.
There remain a lot of questions regarding accusations made among
the three and beyond, and even questions about testimony in
a subsequent court case. So a note on pronunciation. The

(00:59):
way beach is spelled looks French. It looks like it
would be pronounced Beauchamp. It is b ea u c
cha MP. I have heard it pronounced Beauchamp, but in
a version of the story that was told in audio
format by the Kentucky Historical Society, they use the pronunciation Beacham.

(01:21):
It sort of pains me to shorten a beautiful French
name in that way, but we're going to do it.
That's my own bias. I couldn't find a definitive source
for that pronunciation, but I'm going to presume that the
Kentucky Historical Society has more knowledge of it, and so
I'm happy to defer to them. This also made typing
the name very difficult for me. Sure I see that

(01:45):
c slash. Hear that pronunciation a lot like among English speakers,
specifically for Beacham, when it looks like it should be Beauchamp. Oh,
I wanted to be Beauchamp. Again, my own bias, but
that is the story that we going to tell today.
To set the scene, we will start with a very
brief biography of each of the three main players in

(02:07):
the story.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
So first main player in the story Solomon P. Sharp,
who was born on August twenty second, seventeen eighty seven
in Washington County, Virginia. He grew up in a log
cabin in Kentucky after his parents, Thomas and Jean Sharp,
moved there a few years after Solomon was born. This
was a time when this area was still pretty rugged.

(02:31):
Life was challenging there. By the time he was twenty,
Solomon was already a practicing lawyer. He started his career
as a lawyer in Russellville, Kentucky, but he soon moved
about twenty six miles east to Bowling Green, Kentucky. That's
in Warren County. He quickly built a successful law career there,
and he further grew his fortune by investing in land speculation.

(02:55):
In eighteen oh nine, he was elected to the state
legislature as a county represented. He was re elected the
next year. His legislative career was interrupted by the War
of eighteen twelve. Sharp served in the Kentucky Mounted Militia,
but that service was brief. He only served for six
weeks and then he went right back to politics and

(03:16):
was elected to Congress in late eighteen twelve. He was
a two term congressman, and then he went back to
his law practice in Bowling Green. In eighteen eighteen, Sharp
married a woman named Eliza Scott. Eliza was from a
very good family. She sometimes described as like a debutante,
and this was considered a very advantageous marriage for Sharp.

(03:39):
He had accomplished a great deal already by what was
in his early thirties. He owned a lot of land,
He was an enslaver, he owned a lot of people,
and he had a pretty impressive legal and political career,
but marrying Eliza gave him connections to society. The next
major player in the story was Anne Cook. Her name

(04:00):
is spelled a number of ways, depending on the source.
Sometimes it's just a N N, other times and with
an e on the end, or even Anna ending in
an A. Her exact date of birth is not known.
She was born in Virginia sometime in the mid seventeen eighties.
Estimates put it around seventeen eighty six. Her parents were

(04:22):
Giles and Alicia Cook. Anne was their first daughter. They
already had four sons when she was born, and they
had at least one additional son and daughter after Giles
died in the early eighteen hundreds, and at that point
Alicia moved along with Anne and her siblings to Warren County, Kentucky.
By that point, some of Anne's brothers were adults, they

(04:45):
had their own young families. They all moved together. The
reason the whole family moved to Warren County was that
Giles had also been a land speculator, and he had
purchased a lavish estate property complete with it enslaved workforce
in Kentucky before his death, so the whole family moved there.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
The third person in this story is Jeroboam Beecham. He
was born to a Kentucky farm family in September eighteen
oh two, so he was the youngest of the three
people involved here by more than a decade. Though his father,
Thomas Beecham, was a farmer, Jeroboam had relatives in politics,
and he started studying law in eighteen twenty sometime in

(05:30):
the eighteen teens in Bowling Green and Cross Paths with
Colonel Sharp. Anne's life had included a lot of tragedy
in the years after she moved to Kentucky. While things
had initially gone pretty well, three of her brothers had
died in less than three years, and she met the
Sharps through some mutual acquaintances. While those sad events were

(05:51):
playing out.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Apparently, she had some degree of friendship with Eliza Sharp,
she visited her at home on several occasions.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Anne got pregnant in the autumn of eighteen nineteen. She
gave birth in May or June of eighteen twenty. That
baby is usually reported as having been stillborn, although there
are some accounts that suggest that it died shortly after
it was born. At the time, Anne, who was unmarried
and not romantically tied to anyone, claimed that the father

(06:24):
was Solomon Sharp. Anne did not really follow up on
this claim, though, or seek any acknowledgment of it on
Sharp's part. In June of eighteen twenty one, Colonel Sharp
decided to run for public office again. This time he
was running for a state Senate seat, and his political
opponents chose to bring up this allegation that Cook had

(06:46):
raised in an effort to discredit him. He was also
accused of land fraud. During the campaign, these two accusations
were often bundled together in criticism of Sharp, but then
fate intervened and seemed to offer a way for Sharp
to sidestep all of this. He was offered the state
attorney general position by Governor John Adair after the governor's

(07:11):
first choice for that role declined that though meant that
Sharp had to go through confirmation, and of course, these
same accusations again came up during that confirmation, but after
a Senate committee investigation, they found no wrongdoing, and Sharp
was confirmed as Attorney General. Meanwhile, in eighteen twenty one,

(07:32):
Jeroboam Beecham finished his law degree and moved home to
his father's house for a little break while he prepared
for the bar. And he soon met a nearby neighbor
that was Anne Cook, who had moved to the rural
area with her mother. Anne and Jeroboam started a courtship,
and soon Jeroboam proposed. The pair waited until he passed

(07:55):
the state bar exam in eighteen twenty three to move
forward with their wedding plans. In eighteen twenty four, they
were married, Jereboah moved to the farmhouse that Anne shared
with her mother.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
We'll pause here for a sponsor break, and when we
come back, we'll talk about how all of this unraveled.
So at the point we left off before the break,
it kind of seemed like everyone's lives were pretty settled.

(08:28):
Sharp had his Attorney General position, and the newlywed Beechams
were starting their life together. But then Sharp decided he
wanted to run for a state legislator position in eighteen
twenty five. There is a whole story about how and
why that decision was made and we're going to give
a super abbreviated version of it, because this whole affair

(08:50):
could be its own episode as well. It involves a
lot of political arguing about legislation that had been passed
as part of a relief effort to help farmers in
the state of Kentucky who had faced economic hardship and
potential foreclosures, and then that legislation was rejected on a
legal appeal. Following that failed appeal, the sitting judges were

(09:11):
all dismissed by the Kentucky General Assembly and an entirely
new court was appointed. At that point, lawmakers of Kentucky
split pretty hard into two factions, the so called Old
Court Party and the New Court Party. Sharp was a
member of the New Court Party. Sharp had been right
in the middle of that conflict, and he thought he

(09:34):
could support his position better as a legislator than as
an attorney general. That position had been kind of a
straddling of the fence on this issue. Once he entered
the race, though, the allegations about his relationship with Anne
Cook and the paternity of her child surfaced again. Sharp
vehemently denied these allegations, as he had when they circulated previously.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Soon after these allegations came back up, a counter rumor
began to spread that the deceased child had been of
mixed race, suggesting that it could not possibly have been
Sharp's and also insinuating that Anne had a sexual relationship
with a black man. It was believed, though denied, that

(10:19):
Sharp's camp had started that rumor regarding Anne's baby's race,
though there were also claims that her midwife had provided
the Sharp family with a sworn document backing that rumor.
But despite all of this gossip and mudslinging, Solomon Sharp
won his election the day the Legislative Assembly was to begin.

(10:40):
November seventh, eighteen twenty five, Solomon Sharp and his wife
Eliza were awakened at approximately two a m. By somebody
knocking at their door. They were claiming to be somebody
that the couple knew who was in need of lodging.
When questioned through the door, this person said that all
the local taverns were full and that he needed a

(11:02):
bed for the night. Here is how things played out
from there. According to the paper the frankfort Argus quote,
Colonel Sharp told him he should have a bed and
opened the door. The assassin entered and passed with Colonel
Sharp by the door of Missus Sharp's room. He then
asked her you Colonel Sharp. The colonel answered in the affirmative.

(11:24):
The assassin then said, my name is John A. Covington.
Colonel Sharp replied, I do not know you. The assassin said,
damn you, you shall soon know me and plunged the
fatal weapon into his body. Colonel Sharp groaned and fell
to the ground, and when Eliza heard that, she jumped

(11:45):
out of bed and ran to him. Sharp's brother, Leander,
who also lived in the home, heard the noise as
well and ran to see what it was. Sharp died
from his stab wound just a few minutes after the attack,
without saying a word to his wife or brother. The
only clue left at the scene was a bloody handkerchief.
It was believed that it had been used first to

(12:06):
conceal the knife and then to wipe the blade After
the stabbing. The assailant had run out through the same
door that he entered, with neither of Sharp's surviving relatives
having seen any detail of his face, they could only
report that it had been a tall man wearing dark clothes.
A man hunt began immediately, and the trustees of Frankfort

(12:28):
put up one thousand dollar reward quote for the purpose
of apprehending the monster who committed this diabolical act. In
addition to that, the state governor, with an authorization from
the state legislature, offered another three thousand dollars quote for
the apprehension.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Of the murderer of Colonel Sharp. Although Sharp had just
been part of a very polarized election cycle at a
time when Kentucky was very much divided, the community galvanized
over his murder, and even his most intense rivals and
detractors condemned the murder and called for justice.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
While suspicion had briefly fallen on one of Sharp's political rivals,
eventually Beecham was the person who came into focus. He
was known to have been in Frankfurt the night before
the murder. He had apparently left the lodgings where he
was staying in the middle of the night, and then
he had left the following morning. News of the attack

(13:28):
had already broken when he left, and while everyone else
in town was aghast and discussing Sharp's death, Beecham was disinterested,
to the point that people thought it was odd. Additionally,
he had threatened Sharp on several occasions when rumors about
his seduction of Anne had circulated. As citizens of the
area pieced these bits of information together, a group formed

(13:51):
up and went to his and Ann's farm in the
next county to apprehend him. He was brought back to
Frankfurt on November fifteenth and formally arrested once he arrived there.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
There was plenty of testimony at the ready regarding Jereboam Beaucham,
but physical evidence was a lot harder to come by.
He did have a knife when he was taken in,
but that knife could not be conclusively tied to the murder.
The knife wound on Sharp's body was a lot wider
than the blade of Beecham's knife. Furthermore, it was not

(14:23):
the least bit odd at this time and place for
a man to be carrying a knife. The handkerchief that
had been found at the scene had been picked up
by the posse that followed Beacham home, but then it
had been lost on the journey. So the strongest piece
of evidence against Beacham was Eliza Sharp, who identified his

(14:43):
voice as that of the attacker. But Beaucham declared his
innocence from the moment he was taken in. He was
adamant that he had never threatened Sharp, and he wrote
to a number of people hoping for help in the matter.
One of those people has come up on the show
before that was lawyer and politician George M. Bibb, whose
family recovered in July of twenty twenty two. Beecham told

(15:08):
bib who had been a close friend of Sharp's, that
he was being framed. I have penciled that bib episode
in as a Saturday Classic forthcoming for people who are interested.
That might sound far fetched, not the Saturday Classic what
Holly just said, Tracy, really, but there were people who

(15:31):
believed it, and with pretty good reason. In the middle
of all the tumult that had been going on in
Kentucky politics, there had been instances of violence, like basically fisticuffs,
and some of Sharp's friends and allies in the legislature
thought it was possible that his political enemies could have
taken things farther in an effort to eradicate a powerful

(15:53):
opponent to their agendas. One of Sharp's friends named Amos Kendall,
who would eventually become post Master General of the United
States ran the argus of Western America, and he used
his platform to accuse Sharp's rivals of goading Beacham on
by making sure those rumors about Sharp and stayed circulating.

(16:16):
He even accused specific politicians of going directly to Beacham
to talk about these rumors. There were implications that some
of these men had been near Sharp's house in the
early morning of November seventh, insinuating that they had urged
Beacham to take action.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
We are going to get to Beacham's trial, but before
we do, we will hear from the sponsors that keep
stuff unissed in history class going. During the grand jury hearing,
which found cause to move forward with a trial, but

(16:55):
not enough evidence to suggest that anyone other than Beecham
be charged, Jeroboam's attorney, John Pope, asked if they could
postpone the trial for a while so they would have
time to put together their case. That was honored, and
this trial was set for May the following year. When
it began on May eighth, eighteen twenty six, Jeroboam Beacham

(17:17):
pled not guilty.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
During the trial, which was prosecuted by Charles Bibb. Just
to keep the bib family in the mix. One of
the interesting pieces of testimony came from Patrick H.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Darby.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Darby was one of the men who had been accused
of stirring up Jeroboam and inciting him to murder. His
testimony indicated that he had met with Beecham, but that
he hadn't known who the defendant was when they met.
Darby claimed that while the two men both happened to
have stopped at the same roadside well while traveling, Beacham

(17:52):
broached the subject of the purported sexual relationship between Sharp
and Anne and told Darby that Sharp had basically offered
him a bribe, with that being money, an enslaved girl,
and property if they would just drop.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
It and leave him alone.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
But he had never delivered on the promised items, and
Jeroboam was hoping to enlist Darby to help him get
what he was owed. Darby testified that he refused to
do this and that at that point Beacham said he
would kill Colonel Sharp, and cross examination, defense attorney Pope
pointed out that Beaucham's conviction would help Darby and his
political allies get out of hot Water, so his testimony

(18:32):
should be considered questionable. Darby also brought another witness into
the case that was Anne and Jerebouham's neighbor named low
The neighbor stated that when Jereboam had returned to his
farm from Frankfort, he had been waiving a red flag
and claiming victory, but he had not discussed with the
defendant what that actually meant. Lowe also stated that he

(18:55):
had letters from Beacham that incriminated him. These letters were
not miss that included a plan to murder Sharp, they
had been written after Beacham was arrested. They were incriminating
because they included detailed directives on the story that Jereboam
would like low to tell in court, including that Anne
had not been the one to introduce the rumor of

(19:17):
the affair with Sharp, but that it had been concocted
by one of his political rivals, John Waring. Yeah, Pope
really tried to have this letter struck, and it did
not hold up because it obviously made the defendant look
very bad. Throughout this trial, which went on for two weeks,
every aspect of the case was of course addressed and

(19:37):
debated in detail. Witness testimony, though, was largely contradictory, with
just about anything introduced by the prosecution countered with an
opposite account from a defense witness. Everything from the issue
of the size of the knife to the disappearing bloody
handkerchief was discussed, and there too, in those pieces of
physical evidence, or lack thereof, the expert test testimony from

(20:00):
each side contradicted the other. There was no physical evidence
of the actual crime. It was all circumstantial, and the
only sticking point remained Eliza Sharp's insistence that Jereboam's voice
was the one she had heard at their door the
night her husband was murdered. This case went to the
jury at five pm on Friday, May nineteenth. At about

(20:24):
six pm, just an hour later, the verdict was read guilty.
For a while, it seemed like Anne might also be charged.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Their neighbor.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Low had more to say about this. This was actually
precipitated by Jereboham's defense counsel, who introduced the possibility of
Anne being a more active participant as a way to
postpone the sentencing. Lowe told the judges that Anne had
told him that she had helped plan this murder, and
she detailed the various ways that they had gone about

(20:56):
learning the layout of the sharp holme acquiring she and
a knife that were different from her husband's personal items.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Things like that.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Lowe also told the judges that Darby's testimony about a
bribe to silence the Beachams was not correct and that
no such deal had ever been offered. But although this
was compelling and a dramatic development, it was determined that
Anne had not been materially responsible for the murder, so
she was not charged. That same day, Jerebohen was sentenced

(21:28):
to death. Yeah, so much of this trial hung on
the testimony of their neighbor, low who was a person
that Darby had found and said, I think you know
about this case. It's also convoluted and dramatic and a
lot of machinations.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
So much of it.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
I'm like this seems like hearsay to me.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Huh. The date of the execution was set for June sixteenth,
but Beecham asked for a postponement because he wanted to
write something. Surprisingly, this quest was honored and the new
date of execution was set for July seventh. Jereboham returned
to his cell to write, and his wife and joined him.

(22:09):
She stayed with him throughout the rest of his life.
While an appeal was attempted, it did not gain traction.
And this is where Beecham's story seems to have just
changed abruptly. Almost from the moment that he was sentenced.
People started reporting that he was telling people that he
had in fact been the murderer. This information was relayed

(22:33):
to the press, which just ran with it. Simultaneously, he
started to write the thing that he had in mind,
which opens as follows, quote, I am this day condemned
to die by my country's laws. My country has extended
the limited time first fixed for my existence on earth,
in order that I might write an account of the
causes which have led to my death. He goes on

(22:56):
to confess in this document, but also to justify his
actions in doing so, quote, I die for pursuing what
the dictates of my clearest and most deliberate judgment had
determined it was at least justifiable in me to do,
if not my duty to do, and for which no
guilty pang of conscience has ever yet reproved me, or

(23:18):
the certain prospect of death made me feel the least regret.
And if my death teaches a respect for the laws
of my country, my example will be not less serviceable
in teaching a respect for those laws of honor to
revenge the violation and outrage of which I so freely die.
The writing indicates that Jereboham intended for there to be

(23:41):
a didactic outcome from the murder and the trial. Writing quote,
the death of Colonel Sharp at my hands will teach
two lessons not altogether uncalled for by the present moral
and political state of society in Kentucky. It will teach
a certain class of heroes, who make their glory to
consist in triumphs over the virtue and the happiness of

(24:04):
worthy unfortunate orphan females, to pause sometimes in their mad
career and reflect that though the deluded victim of their
villainy may have no father to protect or avenge her,
yet some friendly arm may sooner or later be nerved
by her to avenge her blighted prospects. The second lesson

(24:26):
Beecham felt the colonel's death might impart was this quote.
My example, or rather that of Colonel Sharps, will also
teach the unprincipled politician in his career of ambition, that
if his dishonor has driven from society and buried in
a living grave, an unfortunate female who had fallen a
victim to his villainy. It may be better to lie

(24:50):
under the reproach of her seduction than to hazard adding
further insult to so deep an injury, slander and detraction
to such an outrage upon on every human feeling. One
aspect of Beecham's sentence that fascinated the public at the
time and frankly a lot of people since, was that

(25:10):
Anne made no secret that she wished to have the
same fate as her husband. Jeroboam also wrote about this
in his confession, noting, quote, my wife is, I know,
inflexible in her determination that as I die for her,
she will die with me. I have no motive to
conceal the part which she has acted, the more especially

(25:30):
as she insists to let the world know all the
agency she has had in bringing about a revenge for
the deep, indelible wrong which Colonel Sharp had done her
and her family.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
On July fifth, Anne administered what she thought would be
a fatal dose of laudanum to both herself and to Jereboam.
She had snuck the laudanum into the cell, concealing it
in her clothing. It was not a fatal dose, and
she and Jereboham were both put on suicide watch, but
it doesn't appear that anybody searched her at that time.
Because she still had more laudanum with her, she took that,

(26:06):
but rather than killing her, it just caused her to vomit.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Two days later, on the seventh, which was the date
that Jeroboum was to be executed, the pair asked for
some time alone. They were not supposed to be left unattended,
but for some reason the jayler agreed. Anne still determined
that they should die together, and, once again with contraband
in her possession that no one had managed to notice,

(26:32):
pulled out a knife and stabbed herself in the chest.
She also convinced Jeroboam to stab himself. He stabbed the
knife into his abdomen, but apparently did not hit any
vital organs. His wound was not fatal, and hers was.
She died an hour after the stabbing, with her husband
by her side. She had been removed from the cell,

(26:53):
but they allowed him to come to where they had
her when they realized she was about to expire. He
reportedly stated as he watched her past quote. I wish
doctor Sharp was here. I wish he was here to
behold this spectacle. Her last words, as reported in the
local newspaper, were, Oh, my husband, I die for my husband.

(27:15):
Beecham was taken to the gallows in the early afternoon.
He was composed, He asked for some water and for
the attending bands to play Bonaparte's Retreat from Moscow, and
then he was hanged. After the execution, newspapers ran the
story with an introductory paragraph that read, quote, the tragic
scene has closed and the curtain has fallen over the

(27:37):
murderer of Colonel Solomon P. Sharp. The trial, conviction and
confession of guilt and execution of Jereboam Oh Beecham for
the murder and suicide of Anne Beacham formerly Anne Cook,
who was privy to and instigated her husband to the
murder of Sharp.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
It was also after the execution that Jeroboam's confession became public,
and writing it, it appears that he was hoping the
contents would lead to his sentence being commuted, or even
that he might be pardoned. He did not claim innocence
in the murder, but he invoked Darby's involvement, and this
confession also had some bombshells. A big one was that

(28:17):
he said he had heard about the rumors regarding Sharp
and Cook and had subsequently orchestrated a way to meet
her shortly after they had become acquainted. He said he
had confronted Sharp about it, but that Sharp had gotten
away from him, and that this had happened four years
before the murder. Then he described how his desire to

(28:39):
kill Sharp was a big part of the bond that
he shared with Anne. He wrote that at one point
he and Anne tried to lure Sharp to their house
with a fake lead on a land claim, hoping that
they could kill him there, but Sharp didn't come. What
emerges is a tale of two people deeply intent on
getting revenge.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah. His version of why they didn't get married until
eighteen twenty four was that initially Anne told him he
had to kill Sharp before she would marry him. Like
there's a hole wild what their relationship really was that
plays out in this confession. But another version of the

(29:23):
events was written down by Colonel Sharp's brother, doctor Leander Sharp.
This was titled Vindication of the Character of the Late
Colonel Solomon P. Sharp. And the Leander account, actually, like
the other, does place the blame on Darby's shoulders. It
strongly suggests that he was actually the one that started
the rumors of Sharp and Ann Cook's affair, and it

(29:46):
also reiterates the story that her deceased child had been
of mixed race. One of the things that does give
Leander Sharp's account a bit more weight in the eyes
of many historians is the fact that he worked pretty
diligent to collect evidence. He collected accounts from various witnesses,
he gained sworn testimonies, he actually ran down a lot

(30:08):
of leads, and he included all of this in his work.
But this version of events was suppressed due to pressure
from Darby, and it only came to light decades later
when the manuscript was found in the Sharp home.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yet another publication did see public release in eighteen twenty six,
and it was The Letters of Anne Cook. This salacious
collection of missives was popular with a public that wanted
to condemn the behavior of everyone involved in this tragedy,
but also wanted to learn all of the juicy details
in private. This publication was almost certainly a fake, not

(30:46):
real letters and had written, although it has been referenced
a lot of times by people as though it were
legitimate in the last two centuries.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
As noted in the book Murder and Madness, the Myth
of the Kentucky Tragedy, which was written by Matthew Schoenbackler
in two thousand and nine, quote, most of what we
do know about the Kentucky Tragedy comes from three remarkable documents,
the published proceedings of Beacham's murder trial, Beacham's confession, and
a vindication of Solomon Sharp, written by his devoted brother,

(31:17):
doctor Leander Sharp. Since the Sharp and Beacham writings contradict
each other, and the trial account likely contains testimony that
was purposely false, we're kind of left to puzzle out
for ourselves whether this was truly a crime of honor
bound vengeance, or just the result of political machinations.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
In nineteen sixty seven, the Kentucky Historical Society had a
marker placed at the grave of Jereboam and Anne, which
takes a pretty starry eyed stance. The front of that
marker reads Romantic eighteen twenty five tragedy Jereboam Beacham and
wife Anna buried here in same coffin at own request
to avenge her alleged seduction by Colonel Solomon Sharp. B. H.

(32:00):
Jim murdered him match Sharp's Frankfort home eighteen twenty five.
Beacham and Anna were held in Frankfort jail. She was
released but joined her husband in his cell, refusing to
be separated even by force. He was sentenced to hang.
The back of the marker reads quote. On execution day,
they attempted suicide by stabbing themselves. Her wound was fatal,

(32:23):
but he lived to be hanged that day, the first
legal hanging in Kentucky eighteen twenty six. Colonel Sharp's political
prominence caused case to have widespread newspaper publicity. Edgar Allan
Poe and many other authors wrote of the tragedy inspired
by Beecham's deep devotion and love.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
It's such a romanticized version. A fascination with this case
does seem to be never ending. Fiction has, as referenced
in that marker, drawn from it many times. Social and
legal analysts have continued to break down the details of
the case and examine it through various lenses over the years.
One of the angles that I didn't see considered or

(33:03):
talked about very often. Was put forth by Dixon D. Bruce,
Junior in his two thousand book The Kentucky Tragedy, A
Story of Conflict and Change in Antebellum America. In the book,
Bruce notes the cultural context of Beacham's crime quote, Kentucky
could be a violent place in the eighteen twenties. It
was a place where people gave credence to a strict

(33:24):
and bloody code of honor that, among other things, provided
little room for despoiling a woman's character, as Sharpe is
said to have done, and virtually demanded the kind of
violent retribution Beacham exacted. Thus, to a great extent, the
code served to frame how people understood the Beecham Sharp
affair at the time and how they have continued to

(33:46):
interpret its significance. Bruce also notes, as others have, that
it's impossible to find any contemporary writings about the events
involved that isn't biased. So the only truths that we
could really hang on to are the few components that
are consistent from account to account. Oh, we got a

(34:07):
whole thing to talk about on Friday. We sure knew
about poems. Okay, do you have a listener mail I do.
We have gotten a lot of emails about our Library
of Congress episode, and I want to read them all
because they're really good. But I really wanted to read

(34:28):
this one in the hopes of wishing someone the best
possible good fortune going forward. This is from our listener Katie,
who says, Hello, Holly and Tracy. Longtime listener, first time emailer.
I'm writing to thank you for your episode on the
Library of Congress and your acknowledgment of the unjust firing
of doctor Carla Hayden. I have been a librarian with

(34:48):
the federal government for over eleven years. In the last
four months have been some of the hardest of my career. Sadly,
I know I'm not unique in this regard. I have
always appreciated your references to and use of various libraries
and the vast resources they provide. Libraries of all types
have always faced challenges shrinking budgets, book bands, finding ways

(35:09):
to provide equitable access to all citizens, be it books,
maker spaces, access to free Wi Fi, or a place
to stay warm or cool. This is our passion and
our calling, and as with many helping professions, we are
not in it for the money. As we face so
much uncertainty in the world, libraries have always been a
safe space, and I hope we survive the next four years.

(35:30):
Thank you for all that you do. I'm obviously crying
because I hope so too. But then Katie attaches pictures
of her kiddie Blue as a pet. Tax Blue is
a fluffy, gray, magical creature, very near and dear to
my heart. Is a great cat. So I love these.
Thank you for sharing them. I'm sorry I'm getting so
choked up. I really want libraries to survive and thrive.

(35:54):
That's all I'm wishing you well. If you would like
to write to us and make me cry, you can
do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You
can also subscribe on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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