Ann Pierce Parker Cowper (d. 21 March 1849), principal in a divorce suit, was born between 1780 and 1785, probably in Portsmouth or Isle of Wight County. She was the only child of Mary Pierce Bridger Parker and her second husband, Josiah Parker, a wealthy merchant, planter, and Revolutionary War officer. Her maternal uncle Thomas Pierce was a member of the Convention of 1788. While her father served in the House of Representatives from 1789 to 1801, she joined him in Philadelphia and received a superior education. Throughout her life she was esteemed for her learning and character, despite her unfortunate marriage.

On 4 May 1802 at Macclesfield, her father's Isle of Wight County plantation, Ann Parker married William Cowper, a former naval officer whose uncle William Cowper (d. 1784) had served in the Convention of 1776. Her father reportedly did not approve of the match, though as former chair of a House committee charged with investigating naval matters he probably knew of the captain's distinguished career during the recent undeclared naval war with France. William Cowper had been discharged from the navy in 1801 as part of a reduction of the American naval forces and had joined his brothers in a Norfolk mercantile business. Soon after the marriage, the company went bankrupt, and Cowper and her husband moved to Macclesfield. At Parker's insistence, his son-in-law returned to sea but stayed at Macclesfield between voyages. The first two of their four sons were born before 1805, when William Cowper retired from the sea again and opened a store with profits from the New York–West Indies trade.

Until that time the relationship between Cowper and her husband had been satisfactory, but after the store failed she experienced her husband's ferocious temper. She returned to Macclesfield and he begged forgiveness, but her father proposed petitioning the General Assembly for a divorce. Dreading the public exposure, she refused. Then while her husband was at sea in 1810, her father died. In his will, he left her $250, an annuity of £100, six slaves, and the use of Macclesfield for as long as she chose to remain there; the rest of the large estate was set aside for her first son, Josiah Cowper, on condition that he assume the Parker surname.

When Cowper's husband returned to Virginia, he petitioned the General Assembly for the name change in order to gain control of the underage boy's inheritance. Cowper objected. For two nightmarish years she fought her husband in chancery court to gain her annuity and the use of her property and in the legislature to keep her son's surname from being changed before he came of age. She prevailed in both efforts, but at home her husband cursed, beat, whipped, starved, and threatened her repeatedly. In 1811 while Cowper was pregnant for the fourth time, he unsuccessfully tried to force an abortion and then a miscarriage. Court orders and fines failed to restrain him. Finally, believing in 1812 that her husband meant to murder her, Cowper fled with her infant son to the protection of relatives. She left her husband at Macclesfield, where he held on to their other sons and squandered the estate. Meanwhile Parker's executor died, and no one replaced him with authority to manage the estate for her benefit as the will directed.

By 1816 Cowper's husband was an insolvent debtor, and in November of that year she petitioned for a divorce, which the General Assembly granted on 9 January 1817 as a legal separation without permission to remarry. The Isle of Wight County Court then made her executrix of her father's estate and the legal guardian of her children. During the next few years Cowper successfully fought to evict her former husband from Macclesfield and to maintain her guardianship against the prejudices of a patriarchal society that often made it difficult for her to protect her rights and the rights of her sons in court. Meanwhile, she also battled the creditors of her father's estate. William Cowper died within a few years, and in 1823 Josiah Cowper came of age, legally changed his surname to Parker, and received his inheritance. He then deeded Macclesfield and its 500 acres of land to his mother in lieu of all past and future annuities and moved to a nearby plantation that he had also inherited from his grandfather.

The remainder of Cowper's life is not well documented, but she evidently lived at Macclesfield, quietly and without the public scrutiny that the consequences of her unhappy marriage had focused on her family life. Her sons lived nearby or in Portsmouth. At the time of her death her personal property, including seven slaves, was worth more than $3,000. Ann Pierce Parker Cowper died at Macclesfield on 21 March 1849, according to family records, and most likely was buried in the Parker family graveyard there. Her youngest son, Leopold Copeland Parker Cowper, with whom she had fled from Macclesfield in 1812, was executor of her estate and later served as lieutenant governor of Virginia.

Sources Consulted:
Family history in James F. Crocker, "The Parkers of Macclesfield, Isle of Wight County, Va.," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 6 (1899): 420–424 (with undocumented death date); R. S. Thomas, The Old Brick Church, Near Smithfield, Virginia (1892), 18–19; United States Census Schedules, Isle of Wight Co., 1810 (age between twenty-six and forty-five), 1820 (age between twenty-six and forty-five), 1830 (age between forty and fifty), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Josiah Parker's will in Isle of Wight Co. Will Book, 13:89–90; Norfolk Herald, 8 May 1802; Legislative Petitions of the General Assembly, Isle of Wight Co. (from Ann P. P. Cowper, received 19 Dec. 1811 and 20 Nov. 1816; from William Cowper, received 19 Dec. 1811, 16 Dec. 1812, 6 Dec. 1815, and 14 Nov. 1816; from Citizens, received 12 Dec. 1817; and from Josiah Cowper, received 8 Dec. 1823), Record Group 78, Library of Virginia; Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia, 1816–1817 sess., 175–176; Isle of Wight Co. Order Book (1816–1818), 154–155, 168; Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., The Great Catastrophe of My Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion (2002), 155–167; will, estate inventory, and accounts in Isle of Wight Co. Common Law Will Book (1833–1902), 32–33, 37–43, 67–68.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Thomas E. Buckley, S.J.

How to cite this page:
Thomas E. Buckley, S.J., "Ann Pierce Parker Cowper (d. 1849)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cowper_Ann_Pierce_Parker, accessed [today's date]).

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