ONE BABY’S MIRACULOUS SURVIVAL STORY.
The Missouri legend of the Iron Mountain Baby began in 1902 just outside of Irondale—a tiny town in Washington County—on a hot and humid Thursday in August. It was almost 5 PM.
The St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway northbound No. 4 had just stopped in Bismarck to board passengers and was now traveling through Irondale.
William “Bill” Helms was building a shed on his farm and needed one more board. He went to fetch a discarded plank near the railroad bridge over the Big River in Washington County, according to a 1902 article written by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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The Iron Mountain Railroad’s passenger train rumbled over the bridge, bound for St. Louis, 65 miles to the north.
William was walking the track through a rock cut, or a manmade cut through a rock formation, when he heard a strange squeak, like that of a field mouse.
A shocking discovery
Bill climbed down the steep riverbank and found a small, abandoned telescope valise, also known as a suitcase. It seems someone had thrown the valise from the passing train and intended for it to land in the Big River. It had been damaged as it careened off the rocky sides of the hill and fell about 50 feet.
The Civil War veteran and farmer hurried back up the steep hill, suitcase in hand. When he got to the top and opened the valise, he was shocked to discover a newborn baby.
A black spool of thread was inside the case, which likely had been used to embroider the 10 tiny black pyramids on the skirt of the baby. The baby had a lace cap over his black hair. A long skirt had been folded over the baby’s head, and a knit shirt was wrapped securely around his face.
He was stuffed tightly in the case, which was only 14 inches in length, six inches wide, and four inches deep. As a result of the garments around the baby’s face, he was having great difficulty breathing. His skin was already turning dark from the lack of oxygen.
Bill immediately hurried home to his wife Sarah Jane Helms, who worked to revive the baby. When the garments were fully removed from around the baby, Sarah saw that the baby’s head was swollen and had a large dent. He didn’t cry but only whimpered.
At that moment, Bill decided that if the baby survived, he would raise the infant as his own.
Word spread of the newly discovered newborn, and neighbors arrived to help care for him. No one expected the baby to live. His right arm had been sprained. His left leg and left hand were also injured. By Saturday, many curious people had arrived to see the baby.
Miraculously, the Helms family nursed the baby back to health from the injuries he sustained from the fall. He was given an especially meaningful name: William Moses Gould Helms (William after the man who rescued him, Moses as a biblical reference for being found near the river, and Gould as the railroad’s owner).
A life in the spotlight
The story about the baby—nicknamed the Iron Mountain Baby or Mountain Babe by the trainmen—became a nationwide sensation.
Visitors from all over came to see the child. Millionaires sent letters and asked to adopt him. Women showed up and claimed they were William’s mother. One mysterious woman dressed in black and wearing a veil came to see the baby but left without saying anything. She left $10 for him.
When Bill found the baby, he was already 72 years old and had previously raised a family with his first wife, who died. Bill then married his second wife Sara and raised a second family of six children with her. The couple decided to adopt William when he was six years old.
When Bill died in 1917, Sarah moved with William to Salem, where he graduated from high school. Sarah died in 1925 and was buried next to Bill in Hopewell Cemetery at Mineral Point. The railroad paid for William to attend college. He worked at newspapers in Fredericktown, West Plains, and Fair Grove, near Springfield.
William hated the notoriety that seemed to follow him everywhere, so he abruptly left Fair Grove in 1928 during the night after living in the town for a year and a half. He had resigned as owner and editor of the paper.
William relocated to St. Louis, where he married his wife Sallie in 1933 before they moved to Texas. The couple had one son, William Moses Helms Jr.
The man who was the Iron Mountain Baby died from a heart attack in Texas on January 31, 1953. He was buried at Hopewell Union Church’s cemetery alongside the parents who had rescued and raised him.
In 1962 at age 21 in Houston, Texas, his son William Jr. died at age 21. It is believed he never knew his father was the Iron Mountain Baby.
Records indicate that Sallie (William’s wife and Jr.’s mother) died in 1987 at Racine, Wisconsin. She was not buried alongside William, but her name is on his tombstone.
A song, stage, and story
The Iron Mountain Baby was the muse of many writers and performers. John Barton, a local minister living in Iron County, wrote the folk song “The Ballad of the Iron Mountain Baby” in late 1902. In the 1940s, Farmington resident and country music recording star Johnny Rion was an on-air personality for local radio stations when he sang “The Ballad of the Iron Mountain Baby” live on the air. After receiving numerous requests to sing the song again, he recorded it for New Life Records. The recording is now located in the State Historical Society of Missouri archives in Columbia.
The Missouri mystery is subject of another song: “Sarah Jane and the Iron Mountain Baby” from Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s 2013 album Love Has Come for You. The following year, the events also inspired Steve and Edie to write and compose the bluegrass musical Bright Star. From 2014–2018, the musical was performed in various places, including New York, California, Washington, DC, and California.
The unknown identities of William’s birth parents are the basis for Texas writer Evault Boswell’s historical fiction novel The Iron Mountain Baby.
In the preface of his book, Evault included an interview with William’s school friend James Dodson, who said William 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.” He described William as “a brilliant conversationalist in many subjects and was constantly seeking knowledge.”
A local legend
Despite the events occurring over 120 years ago, many residents have memories of hearing the story of the Iron Mountain Baby and still pass it along today.
Ninety-six-year-old Hopewell resident Ruth Humphrey remembers her father, Guy Nixon, detailing the days he had attended school with William.
“The first day of school, they brought him to school and asked my dad to show him around,” she says. “So, he took him by the hand and led him around. My dad was about a year older than William.”
Ruth doesn’t know how many years William went to the one-room schoolhouse before moving to Salem, but the boys remained friends all of their lives. Ruth explains how William never wanted to be known as the Iron Mountain Baby.
“His headstone in the cemetery at Hopewell Union Church was a plain stone until a few years ago. One of his great nephews or someone had the ‘Iron Mountain Baby’ added to it.”
St. Louis resident Leanna Rigdon, 77, was born in Desloge. She and her family moved to Davis Crossing, near Irondale, when she was young. Her grandmother, Carrie Ann Helms, was the sister of Bill, who found and later adopted William.
“Bill was coming home from work and heard something crying, like a cat,” Leanna says, recalling the story that was passed down through her family.
Golda, Leanna’s mother, told her stories about when her own mother, Carrie, was younger and played with William when they visited.
“Mom said he limped, and they thought it was because he was thrown off the train,” she says.
Desloge resident Cheryl Gilliam remembers her mother, Mary Helms Gilliam, telling the Iron Mountain Baby story to her and her siblings, Tammy, Chuck, and Trish.
“My mom would sing the song to us,” Cheryl says. “My mom learned the song from her mom, my grandmother Iva Helms, or from my grandpa, Charlie Helms.” Cheryl was about six years old when she first heard the song.
Irondale resident Joanie Barton’s mom, Hallie Waller, maintained a scrapbook of local history, which includes many newspaper clippings about the Iron Mountain Baby’s story.
Hallie, who passed away when she was 90, lived in Hopewell and went to school with William. “Mom got acquainted with him as a kid because they were about the same age,” says Joanie. “I think they played together.”
Hallie retold William’s story to Joanie by saying he “was wrapped up in a cloth in a suitcase, and they threw him off the train. Mom said some people said the Iron Mountain Baby was a scam and that he wasn’t thrown from the train. It’s an interesting story. It is local history.”
As the legend has been passed down through word of mouth, books, music, and other productions, it has cemented itself in people’s memories.
A final ride
William hated how his past had continuously interrupted his future. After Johnny Rion’s recording of “The Ballad of the Iron Mountain Baby” in the 1940s, William disappeared from the limelight, and he stayed out of it until the day he died.
Ironically, William’s life centered around a train, yet he was only aboard a train twice: when he was thrown from the train as a baby and when his body was returned to Missouri from Texas a half century later on the same Iron Mountain Railway from which he had been thrown.
His funeral was unpublicized and held for his immediate family, which included Sallie and their son William, who was 11 at the time. There was no mention of the Iron Mountain Baby.
William never learned the identities of his birth parents, and he is buried beside his adoptive parents. Their graves are in the Hopewell Cemetery, a peaceful graveyard next to a small white country church on a beautiful hill overlooking the spot where baby William was first found.
Apparently, William had often commented that when he died, he would prefer to be buried by his parents where his story first began.
On William’s gray granite tombstone are the words of 2 Timothy 2:15, a bible verse that urges people to accurately and earnestly display the truth. It says, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
The ballad of The Iron Mountain Baby
By John Barton
The train was running at full speed,
The northbound number four;
And as they crossed Big River bridge,
She cast it from the door.
A father unkind, a mother untrue,
But this I am bound to say:
It must have pierced a mother’s heart
To cast her child away.
The valise was fourteen inches long
In which the child was found;
Six inches wide, five inches deep
And very closely bound.
They bruised its head, and hurt its arm,
The fall upon the ground.
A dear old man lived on a farm
This poor little baby found.
It was Bill Helms who found this child;
He heard its helpless cry,
And took it to his loving wife,
Who would not let it die.
They washed and bathed its little head
And soon she hushed its cry.
May God protect them, while they live,
God help them when they die.
This little baby, bless its heart,
I cannot tell its name;
It has a mother to take its part,
A father just the same.
They call him William Moses Gould
Because he has no name;
And if he lives to be a man
He’ll wear it just the same.
Come one, come all, attention give
This lesson is for you;
Teach your children how to live,
And tell them what to do.
This wicked world is full of sin
God help us all to pray,
And be prepared to enter in,
The fold at judgement day.
This article was originally published in the June 2025 issue of Missouri Life.
