Helm, Emilie Todd, 1836-1930

Emilie Todd was born in 1836 in Lexington to Robert Smith Todd and his second wife, Elizabeth Humphreys. Benjamin Hardin Helm was born in 1831 in Elizabethtown, the son of John Larue Helm, a governor of Kentucky. Benjamin Helm attended the Kentucky Military Institute and the U.S. Military Academy, graduating ninth in his class at West Point in 1851. After brief service as a cavalry officer, Helm resigned his commission, due to illness, in 1852. He then studied law, first at the University of Louisville where he graduated in 1853, and later at Harvard. He practiced law in Elizabethtown and later in Louisville from 1856 to the outbreak of the Civil War. He married Emilie Todd in 1856. Helm was briefly associated with Kentucky's short-lived stance of neutrality as Asst. Inspector General of the State Guard. After neutrality was abandoned, Helm became a colonel in the Confederate Army with the First Regiment of Kentucky Cavalry. Following the battle of Shiloh he received promotion to brigadier general. In early 1863 Helm assumed command of the First Kentucky or "Orphan" Brigade. He was mortally wounded September 20, 1863 while leading these troops in the Battle of Chickamauga. Emilie Helm became very active after the war as a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She also took part in many of the military reunions and was named "Mother" of the Orphan Brigade. She also served as postmistress in Elizabethtown from 1883 to 1895. Helm later moved to a colonial mansion near Lexington once owned by her ancestor, General Levi Todd. She died there on February 20, 1930.