John D. Helmer, ex-President of the Vacuum Oil Company of Rochester, was born in Canajoharie, Montgomery County, N.Y., on the 4th of March, 1819. His grandfather, John G. Helmer, came from Germany to this country and settled in New York State on a farm, where the last years of his life were passed. John I. Helmer, son of John G., was brought up on the farm in the Black River country, and was a teacher for many years during his youth. When he came to the town of Pike, his son, John D., the subject of this memoir, was only three years old. A farm just three miles beyond the village precincts was purchased by the father, and here John D. Helmer has lived for seventy-two years. Mr. John I. Helmer's wife was Miss Betsey Walrath. Of the eleven children to whom she gave birth, only three are now living.

At twenty-one years of age John D. Helmer began to work on his father's farm at a stated rate of wages per month, and earned in three-quarters of a year one hundred dollars. Finding his services valuable, his father agreed to give him one hundred and fifty dollars a year for his labor; and at the end of eleven years he had amassed fifteen hundred dollars. This sum he invested in the homestead, which he purchased from his father, and to which he added one hundred and thirty-five acres afterward. At thirty-two years of age he was united in marriage to Miss Lemira Everest, a daughter of David Everest, of Pike. Mrs. Helmer, who was one of three children of her parents, was herself the mother of two children -- Ella M., who married James A. Jones, a farmer of Pike, and became the mother of three children -- Ernest, Nellie, and Roy, who died at the promising age of seventeen years seven months, having been asphyxiated while attending the World's Fair at Chicago, where he had charge of the Vacuum Oil Company's exhibit; and Fred D., who married Miss Jennie White, whose father is a real estate dealer in Rochester. One child, Harry, is the issue of this union.

Industrious, prudent, and thrifty from his youth, Mr. John D. Helmer has by sagacious enterprise and close application to business become the wealthiest man in Pike. The salt developments in this county are principally owing to the keen foresight and energetic efforts of himself and his brother-in-law, Hiram Everest, who sank the first well in Wyoming, the germ of the present large works. He owned at one time over three hundred acres of land where he now resides; but he sold some to Mr. Marble, and deeded to his son-in-law, Mr. James A. Jones, about one hundred and thirty acres. After more than thirty years of wedded life, Mr. Helmer was called to part with his wife, who died on the 24th of September, 1886; but his daughter, Mrs. Jones, lives on the adjoining farm, and the presence of child and grandchildren do much to cheer the loneliness of a bereaved old age. His son, Frederick Helmer, who is a graduate of Yale College, has the management of the Western department of the Vacuum Oil Company at Chicago. Mr. Helmer is a loyal Republican. A portrait of this valiant "captain of industry," this indefatigable toiler with hand and brain, is appropriately placed in the "Biographical Review" of Wyoming and Livingston Counties.