Last updated: October 10, 2024
Person
Adam Helmer
Quick Facts
Significance:
A hero of the Mohawk Valley during the American Revolution, Helmer undertook a 30+ mile run in 1778 to warn American settlements of pending attack.
Place of Birth:
British Colony of New York
Date of Birth:
Circa 1754
Place of Death:
Brutus in Cayuga County, New York
Date of Death:
April 9, 1830
Place of Burial:
Weesport, New York State
Cemetery Name:
Weedsport Rural Cemetery
Adam Frederick Helmer (also known as John Adam Frederick Helmer and Hans Adam Friedrich Helmer), born circa 1754, was an American Revolutionary War hero among those of the Mohawk Valley and surrounding regions of New York State. According to the memories of his sons-in-law: in his prime Helmer, was about 5’ 8”, weighed around 150 lbs, had blue eyes and light-colored hair.
He was made nationally famous by Walter D. Edmonds' popular 1936 novel "Drums Along the Mohawk" with its depiction of "Adam Helmer's Run" of September 16, 1778, to warn the people of German Flatts of the approach of Joseph Brant and his company of Natives and British Loyalists.
Adam Helmer was born in German Flatts, New York, to Maria Barbara Kast, and George Frederick Helmer (who had been born in 1706, in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse a city in the Rhineland-Palatinate region in southwestern Germany). His father emigrated to America sometime before 1710 and eventually settled in one of the numerous Palatine farming communities on the south side of the Mohawk River in central New York.
In the summer of 1776 he was assigned as a scout in Captain John Breadbake's Company in the Tryon County Militia. He also married Anna Piet Bellinger that year. Together they had ten children: Frederick (1777), Margaret (1778), Anna (1781), Adam (1783), Peter (1786), Elizabeth (1788), Catharine (1790), David (179?), Maria Barbara (1795), and Eve (1800).
On August 2, 1777, the tensions of the war in the Mohawk Valley came to a head when the American Fort Schuyler (Stanwix) was attacked and surrounded by British forces, including many of Helmer's former neighbors who had left the area the year prior. On the evening of August 5, 1777, Helmer was chosen by General Nicholas Herkimer to be one of three messengers to deliver word to the besieged fort that the Tryon County Militia was on its way to help them. When he reached the fort, a cannon was fired as a signal to the militia down the river that the message was recieved.
It appears that Helmer also took part in the August 6th afternoon sortie (raid) against the Indian and Loyalist camps carried out by troops from the fort to try to draw British attention away from Herkimer’s advance. While this raid did not end up assisting Herkimer, it did destroy the main Indian/Loyalist camps, captured a great deal of badly needed supplies, and dealt a severe moral blow to the Indians supporting the British siege. Herkimer and his men ended ambushed in what became known as the Battle of Oriskany. During the bloody fight, Herkimer himself was mortally wounded and Helmer’s brother Capt. John Frederick Helmer was killed and another, Lt. George Frederick Helmer II, was seriously wounded.
In September 1778, Lt. Helmer and eight scouts under his command were sent to the Unadilla River Valley to spy on Joseph Brant's company of Indians and Tories who were encamped at Unadilla near the confluence of the Unadilla and Susquehanna Rivers. It was feared that Brant would send a raiding party north to the Mohawk Valley during the harvest season to forcefully obtain stores for the winter ahead. When Helmer's scouts reached Edmeston Manor, the farm of Percifer Carr, just north of what is now South Edmeston, they were attacked by a large group of Brant's men, apparently part of the feared raiding party on its way north. Several of the scouts were killed, but Helmer managed to escape.
Helmer took off running to the north-east, through the hills, toward Schuyler Lake and then north to Andrustown (near present-day Jordanville, New York) where he warned his sister's family of the impending raid and obtained fresh footwear. He also warned settlers at Columbia and Petrie's Corners, most of whom then fled to safety at Fort Dayton. When Helmer arrived at the fort, severely torn up from his run, he told Colonel Peter Bellinger, the commander of the fort, that he had counted at least 200 of the attackers en route to the valley. The straight-line distance from Carr's farm to Fort Dayton is about thirty miles, and Helmer's winding and hilly route was far from straight. Catherine Myers, then a 10-year-old girl living near German Flatts, remembered that “Helmer’s clothing was torn to tatters, his eyes were bloodshot, his hands and face and limbs were bleeding and lacerated from the effects of the brambles and bushes through which he had forced his headlong flight….”
It was said that Helmer then slept for 36 hours straight. It was initially feared that he had so exhausted himself that he would not survive. During his sleep, on September 17, 1778, the farms of the area were destroyed by Brant's raid. The total loss of property in the raid was reported as: 63 houses, 59 barns, full of grain, 3 grist mills, 235 horses, 229 horned cattle, 279 sheep, and 93 oxen. Only two men were reported killed in the attack, one by refusing to leave his home when warned. Three days later Helmer led another group of militia back to the Carr Farm on the Unadilla, discovered the bodies of three of his scouts, and buried them at that site. The fate of the other five scouts is not known.
Later in the war, Helmer served in the New York State Levies under Colonel Lewis DuBois. In 1803, Helmer bought land for in the modern-day town of Brutus, in Cayuga County where he died. Adam Helmer died on April 9, 1830 at the approximate age of 76, in the town of Brutus in Cayuga County, New York. The remains of he and his wife were later moved to the Weedsport Rural Cemetery.
His headstone reads:
Adam Helmer
Famous Mohawk Valley Scout
Levies under Gen. Herkimer
6th Dutchess Co. Militia
Image below: New York State hitorical marker at the orginal burial site of Helmer and his wife on the north side of Cottle Road in the Town of Brutus, New York.