John LaRue Helm (4 July 1802-8 September 1867) was the Whig Governor of Kentucky from 31 July 1850 to 2 September 1851 (succeeding John J. Crittenden and preceding Lazarus W. Powell) and its Democratic governor from 3 to 8 September 1867 (succeeding Thomas E. Bramlette and preceding John W. Stevenson). He was the father of Benjamin Hardin Helm and Lucinda Barbour Helm.
Biography[]
John LaRue Helm was born in Hardin County, Kentucky in 1802, and he became a lawyer in 1823 and served as Meade County's district attorney due to being the only lawyer in the county. Helm settled in Elizabethtown, and he became involved in Whig politics and served in the State House from 1826 to 1843, in the State Senate in 1844, as Lieutenant Governor from 1848 to 1850, and as Governor from 1850 to 1851 and in 1867. While he opposed secession on the eve of the American Civil War, he was arrested by the Union Army under suspicion of being a Confederate sympathizer, but he was later released, and became a Democrat on the war's end. He briefly served as governor in 1867, dying five days into his tenure.