Person

Benjamin Hardin Helm (Louisville, Ky, attorney, brigadier general (C.S.A))

b. 1831-06-02 d. 1863-09-20

Louisville, Kentucky, attorney and soldier (C.S.A). Kentucky native. Son of John Larue Helm and Lucinda Barbour Hardin Helm. Married to Emily Todd Helm on March 26, 1856, in Franklin County. Father of Katherine Helm, Elodie Todd Helm, and Benjamin Hardin Helm. Attended Elizabethtown Seminary. Attended the Kentucky Military Institute near Frankfort. Graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1851. Served in the 2nd Regular United States Cavalry as brevet second lieutenant from 1851 to October 9, 1852. Graduate of the University of Louisville School of Law in 1853. Attended Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1853. Attorney in partnership with Martin H. Cofer and John Larue Helm in Elizabethtown from 1853 to 1856. Member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1855. Commonwealth’s attorney for the third district from 1856 to 1858. Attorney in partnership with Martin D. Cofer from 1856 to 1858. Attorney in partnership with Horatio W. Bruce in Louisville from 1858 to 1861. Employed Briggett [Unknown] as a servant in Louisville in 1860. Appointed assistant inspector-general of the Kentucky State Guard in 1860. Served in the 1st Kentucky Cavalry (C.S.A.) as colonel and brigadier general from October 19, 1861, to August 5, 1862. Served in the 1st Kentucky Brigade of the Army of Tennessee as commander from January 31, 1863. Died at the Battle of Chickamauga in Chickamauga, Georgia, on September 20, 1863.

Details

Sex
Male
Race
White

Bibliography

Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Jefferson County, Kentucky p. 345.

Find A Grave, "Benjamin Hardin Helm (June 2, 1831 to May 29, 1863," Memorial #8925, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8925 (accessed April 9, 2019).

Kentucky Marriage Records, Franklin County Courthouse, Frankfort, Kentucky, Franklin County Marriages, Film #994027.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), U.S. Military and Naval Academies, Cadet Records and Applications, 1800-1908, Washington, D.C.; Series Number: M2037.

Kentucky General Assembly, Kentucky Public Documents, vol. 2 , “Auditor of Public Accounts, Fiscal Year Ending October 10, 1857” (Frankfort, Kentucky: A.G. Hodges, Public Printer, 1857), 285 and 309.

Edwin Porter Thompson, History of the First Kentucky Brigade (Cincinnati, Ohio: Caxton Publishing House, 1868), 338-345.

_John L. Kleber ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 421.

_Spencer E. Tucker ed., American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2013), 898.

Stephen Berry, _House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided By War(New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009).

Citation

Helm, Benjamin Hardin. Accessed via the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, https://discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/S32212992 (November 12, 2026).

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