Helm Place

"Fromer home of Emilie Todd Helm, the half-sister of Mary Todd Lincoln, who renamed the estate Helm Place in honor of her late husband, Ben Helm who fought in the Confederate Army. Emilie ultimately made Helm Place her final home, where her three adult children, Katherine, Elodie and Ben Jr., joined her. After Emilie Todd Helm’s death in 1930, her children – who had no children of their own – sold Helm Place to family friend and prominent Lexington attorney William Townsend and his wife, Genevieve. Still, the Helm children maintained lifetime tenancies at Helm Place. It was the Townsend’s daughter, Mary Genevieve, who ultimately placed the property and home into the trust of the KMPF in 1996 after spending her life there with her husband Joseph Murphy Jr. According to the foundation, Mary Genevieve had been involved with the nonprofit for more than 20 years by the time of her death in 2000. Her husband lived out his life there before he too died in 2011. Helm Place transferred to the KMPF in 2012. The KMPF, which operates the Mary Todd Lincoln House museum in downtown Lexington, hoped to turn Helm Place into a period museum, but ultimately it couldn’t come up with the money to restore it and support running it as a museum."