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Alexander Majors Chapter
Kansas City

Arthur Loux's Patriot ancestors...

     Samuel HELM, my 4th Great Grandfather, served in a New Jersey regiment as an Indian spy. The region in which he served was comprised of parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York centered about what is now Port Jervis, New York. Several interesting accounts of Helm�s exploits survive including The History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe Counties of Pennsylvania by Alfred Matthews, 1886, the New Jersey Archives, and Helm�s pension file.

Helm�s grandfather on his mother�s side was the first white settler of Sullivan County, NY. His paternal grandfather, Michael Helm, was killed by Indians in the French and Indian War. One account states: "He was nearly six feet in height, broad shouldered, muscles well-developed, nerves as true as steel and bones as strong as a lion's. His fists would strike sledge-hammer blows. He could run like a deer and his eye was as piercing as an eagle's. His dress was homespun; hunting shirt of buckskin, pants of rough linen, with deer skin leggins, his shoes moccasins. He lived by hunting and fishing. When prepared for a deer hunt his appearance was truly regal. Helm was a mighty hunter and killed wild turkeys, grouse, ducks and geese without number. He shot scores of deer on the runways and many more when they came to the ponds at night to water and feed on the white pond-lillies. He was a splendid shot at the target and at night could easily snuff a candle at fifty paces. He was not a scientist and knew nothing of the transit of Venus, but he possessed knowledge of immense value to a frontiersman. He had not studied grammar, yet he used words that fully expressed his meaning. He knew nothing of maps and geography, but the moss on the trees was his compass by day and the "pointers" showed him north in the night-time. He had no watch, but the son and stars told him the time unerringly. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division were the only arithmetic he had learned, yet he could calculate great sums with wonderful exactness."

Sam Helm enlisted as a private in 1779 in a company commanded by Peter Westbrook of the Sussex County, NJ militia. While serving under Captain Westbrook he was frequently selected by his captain to watch the movements of the Indians on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River where they were frequently collected in large numbers. Helm participated in several battles against Indian and Tory forces. Two of these battles are well documented.

The Battle of Minisink near Barryville, NY took place on July 22, 1779. This conflict was a clash between Colonel Joseph Brant, an Indian and head of the pro-British Indian Six Nation Confederacy and a force of outnumbered New York and New Jersey militia. Brant led the Six Nations together with Tories into the Delaware Valley on a raid which he hoped would provide provisions for his soldiers and would put an end to Indian harassment.

The forces of the militia assaulted the Indians in two groups. Brant drove off the larger group including eighteen-year-old Sam Helm and surrounded the smaller group. This brave band of militiamen, greatly outnumbered, suffering from thirst and exhaustion and a dwindling ammunition supply, fought a losing battle for five hours against impossible odds. The enemy, sensing the weakened resistance grouped their forces, attacked and completely routed the militiamen. The seventeen wounded men left behind were massacred.

On April 20, 1780, Indians were sighted near the Raymondskill brook on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware. Nineteen year old Captain Peter Westbrook, who was in charge of a stone fort on the New Jersey side of the Delaware, thought that he would find the Indians on Powwow Hill, a plateau at the mouth of the Raymondskill creek. Some men went up the river and the others crossed to Powwow Hill. Soon after crossing the river the party found two Indians. Sam Helm shot and killed one of them. On up the hill they followed a trail that led them to Bastian Spring, where they were ambushed by a group of Indians. At this battle, known as the Battle of Conashaugh, Sam Helm was shot through the fleshy part of both thighs, but waded down the Conashaugh brook, supported by two men who carried a tree branch that he leaned on. Aided by his companions Helm crossed the river to safety.

Helm lived a long life after the war and passed away in April 1846.  (submitted by Arthur Loux on August 1, 2000.)