The Real Iron Mountain Baby
This Is the True Story...
By Evault Boswell
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| William Moses Gould Helms, also known as the Iron Mountain Baby, was stuffed in a suitcase and thrown from a train in 1902. To his right is the actual suitcase he was found in. Courtesy of Evault Boswell. | |
On August 14th, 1902, at about eight o'clock in the evening, No. 4 engine of the Iron Mountain Railroad crossed the trestle at Hopewell, Missouri, on its run to St. Louis. At that moment, someone, “none knows who,” pitched a small telescoping suitcase from the train.
Obviously it was meant to land in the water of Big River, but instead, it hit a sandbar sticking out into the river, whose level was lower than normal. A story in the DeSoto, Missouri Press in 1969 by Eddie Miller reported the valise had caught in the bushes on the river's edge and broken the fall.
Below the trestle William Helms was on his way home when he heard a strange noise at the water's edge. On investigation, he found the suitcase, which was fourteen inches long, five inches wide, and six inches deep. It had straps with clasps around it that held the two parts together.
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The Iron Mountain Railroad from north of Herth Chemical Company. Photograph by Thomas O'Reilley, 1888. Missouri History Museum. |
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Inside, Helms found a baby boy. He took the baby home to his wife, and although they were advanced in years and had already raised a family, they decided to keep the infant.
There was nothing to identify the child. Inside the suitcase they found an extra set of clothing and some black thread. Helms and his wife concluded that the baby must have been about five days old.
One report said the baby was injured from the fall. Its left arm and leg were hurt and it had a dent on its head, but due to the care of the Helms, the baby was healthy in four months. Other stories have said the baby was only slightly injured or not at all.
They named him William, after the man who found him; Moses, because he was found at the water's edge like the Biblical baby; and Gould, after the owner of the Iron Mountain Railroad, Jay Gould.
The story of the “Iron Mountain Baby” ran in the St. Louis papers and spread across the county. Many came to see the baby and some offered to adopt it. At least one lady came, dressed in black, claiming the baby was hers.
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| Iron Mountain Railroad engine at Iron Mountain. Stereograph by Robert Benecke, 1870. Missouri History Museum. | |
The Helmses legally adopted the baby when he was six years old. When the elder Helms died while his adopted son was in high school, Mrs. Helms and young Bill moved to Salem, Missouri, where he finished high school. He attended college in Springfield, Missouri, at Braughton University and Southwest State Teacher's College. He learned the printing trade while in college and practiced it all his life. His schooling was paid for by the Iron Mountain Railroad, which later became the Missouri-Pacific.
According to his school friend James Dodson, he was a quiet young man who did not participate in sports but loved the outdoors and would sometimes walk for hours in the Ozark woods that he loved.
Dodson described him as industrious, ambitious, open, and outgoing to all. He was a brilliant conversationalist in many subjects and was constantly seeking knowledge.
He had a limp, a result of an injury to his hip suffered in the fall from the train, and was a studious teenager. The young man had wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. Many people thought he must be of Greek heritage.
His story might have ended with the miraculous recovery of the baby from the edge of Big River, but a preacher named John Barton wrote a ballad called “The Iron Mountain Baby,” which became very popular in that day.
In the late 1940s, a country recording star for King Records, Johnny Rion of Farmington, Missouri, recorded the song. Down through the years, some versions have included more verses than others. Rion became a disk jockey on KFMO in Flat River (now Park Hills), Missouri, and on KREI in Farmington. Later he became a preacher and disk jockey in East St. Louis.
Ballad of the Iron Mountain Baby
by John Barton
I have a song I'd like to sing
It's awful but its true.
About a babe thrown from a train,
By a mother, I know not who.
This little babe but a few days old
Was in a satchel lain;
Its clothes around it folded;
And thrown from the train.
The train was running at full speed,
The northbound No. 4.
And as it crossed Big River bridge,
She cast it from the door. [1]
A father unkind, a mother untrue
This little baby had known, [2]
It must have grieved that mother's heart
To have it from her thrown. [3]
The valise was fourteen inches long
In which the child was found;
Five inches wide and six inches deep
And very closely bound.
A kind old man who lived on a farm
By whom the child was found; [4]
Its head was bruised, its arm was hurt [5]
From falling to the ground.
It was Bill Helms who found this child
He heard its helpless cry,
He took it to his loving wife—
She would not let it die.
She washed and bathed its little head
And soon she hushed its cry
May God bless them, while they live
God bless them when they die.
They called him William Moses Gould
Because he had no name.
And if he lives to be a man,
He'll wear it just the same.
In 1933, William Moses Gould Helms married a girl from St. Louis named Sallie. They moved to Houston, Texas, where they had one son. Some reports say he (the son) died at the age of 14. In addition to being a printer, Helms made his living for a time as a newspaper editor.
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William Moses Gould Helms as a young man. Courtesy of Evault Boswell. |
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The Iron Mountain Baby died on January 31, 1953, and his body was transported back to Hopewell for burial over the same trestle from which he had been thrown 51 years earlier.
He passed away without ever knowing who his biological parents were.
After his death, Sallie moved back to St. Louis and then for some reason, moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where she passed away from an unknown illness. Her tombstone reflects the date of her birth as September 17, 1904, and her death as September of 1987.
On a pilgrimage to Hopewell, Missouri, I located the grave of William Moses Gould Helms with the help of a friendly resident of the small, spread-out town. The stone is not far from a tall white church, and the inscription reads: “William Moses Helms, Aug. 14, 1902, Jan. 31, 1953. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (Timothy 2:15). The left side of the stone has the name Sallie and her birth date, but no record of her death.
At the first of the year in 1953, a historian named L. L. Richardson wrote a story about the Iron Mountain Baby and sent it to the editorial page editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Irving Dilliard.
Dilliard liked the story and said he would run it when he had room. He finally ran it on Saturday, January 31, 1953—by coincidence, the day William Moses Gould Helms died.