Lucinda Barbour Helm (pen name, Lucile; December 23, 1839 – November 15, 1897) was a 19th-century American author, editor, and women's religious activist from Kentucky.

She was an active member of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the International Christian Workers' Association.

Her paternal grandfather, Thomas Helm, went to Kentucky in American Revolutionary War times and settled near Elizabethtown.

[3] When she was about 11 years old her father became governor of the state, succeeding J. J. Crittenden, who resigned to accept a place in President Taylor's cabinet.

Her father, after serving the first term as governor, applied himself to his profession of attorney for the three years following, and then became president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

[7] She studied drawing and painting, was fond of horseback riding and of shooting-parties, but she refused to dance or engage in games that seemed to her inconsistent with a Christian life.

Her mother desired her to visit Louisville in the winter, but upon arriving there, instead of attending the a round of social festivities, she went to one of the principal city missionaries, Mrs.

She went to work as a correspondent for a large paper published in England called the Western News, and sent frequent letters to it giving war items.

The strain of the war so affected her nervous system that she came near to losing her eyesight, and for more than a year faced the possibility of blindness, but after going through treatment, she recovered.

She formed various societies and literary "clubs " where she found it practicable, for she believed organized effort to be an important factor in social and religious economics.

The Louisville Conference money was the first received by Mrs. Manier (who was then the agent), and she has said to her coworkers that but for it she could not have met the expense of the first issues of the Advocate.

[12] Helm was interested in all mission fields, and was very anxious for the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society to open work in Brazil.

Ransom, a returned missionary, to write two leaflets for her, and she made strong appeals to arouse the women to engage in the work.

After her mother's death in 1885, Helm, desiring the wider opportunities furnished by a city for Church work, went to reside with her eldest sister, Mrs. Judge Bruce, in Louisville.

Her idea was to make provision in the constitution at that time for some phases of local home mission work, but this was strenuously opposed on the ground that it would embrace too much.

[18] Letters poured into her office from the Indian Mission, Montana, Oregon, California, and all of the Southern states and she replied to all of them.

A certain amount of traveling had to be done, and Helm visited eleven Conferences ranging from Indian Mission to North Carolina.

[20] Helm was a leader and an activist,[21][22] and determined to make a plea at the General Conference of 1890, through the Board of Church Extension, for the enlargement of the charter for woman's work.

She was told that the Parsonage Society had hardly gotten a sure footing in the Church at that time, and by moving too fast, and undertaking to enlarge the work to such an extent, she would find it impracticable and calculated to do more harm than good.

She wrote articles on the subject, and conducted a large correspondence, presenting the matter to the influential women as well as to the men of the Church.

She undertook the publishing of this paper in January 1892, soon after the formation of the Woman's Parsonage and Home Mission Society; this was one feature of the enterprise that elicited criticism.

She felt confident, however, that it would add to the interest and extension of the work, and at a meeting of the Central Committee in September 1891, the decision was made and she took measures to arrange for its publication.

She came to Nashville and spent a number of days with Mrs. Harriet C. Hargrove and Arabel Wilbur Alexander while she made arrangements at the Methodist Publishing House, and formulated her plans for the first issue of the paper.

Her sympathies were broad, and she gave her readers, as often as possible, articles and selections on the temperance movement, Salvation Army work, kindergarten methods, and other philanthropies of national interest.