Jefferson-Columbia County ArArchives Biographies.....White, Foster O. ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ar/arfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Robert Sanchez http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00027.html#0006574 June 12, 2009, 6:09 pm Author: S. J. Clarke (Publisher, 1922) HARVEY C. COUCH. On the stage of business activity Harvey C. Couch occupies a central position. He may well be termed one of the captains of industry of Arkansas, by reason of the extent and importance of the interests which he controls, being now the president of the Arkansas Light & Power Company, making his home at Pine Bluff. The story of his career is the record of steady progression at the hand of one who has been master of himself and his environment, who has recognized and directed the development of his own powers and who has utilized his opportunities for the advancement of public welfare, as well as the attainment of individual prosperity. Mr. Couch is a native of Arkansas and his life record indeed reflects credit upon the history of the state. He was born at Magnolia, August 21, 1877, and is a son of Thomas G. and Manie (Heard) Couch. The Couch family is of Welsh extraction but was early established on American soil and several representatives of the family served in the colonial army during the Revolutionary war. Early representatives of the name settled in Virginia and others took up their abode in Georgia about 1810. The grandfather of Harvey C. Couch in the paternal line was a lieutenant in the Confederate army and his three brothers also served with the southern forces. The great-grandmother in the paternal line was in her maidenhood Rebecca Pierce, a relative of the distinguished Bishop Pierce. The first of the Couch family to come to Arkansas was William Couch, who with his four sons removed from Thomaston, Upson county, Georgia, to this state, arriving in the year 1853. The Heard family, of which Harvey C. Couch is a representative in the maternal line, comes of Scotch lineage and was early established in the vicinity of Augusta, Georgia. Thomas Heard, the grandfather, was a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army and in days of peace devoted his life to the medical profession, practicing in Georgia. He married Martha Cavin, who with her children came to Arkansas. settling in Magnolia, where she conducted one of the early inns of that locality. Governor Heard also came of the same ancestral line. Thus the natal strength of Welsh and Scotch blood flows in the veins of Harvey C. Couch, although the long connection of the families with the United States establishes them firmly as one hundred per cent American. Harvey C. Couch, at the period when most boys are attending school, was earning his living by working on the hillside farm of his father in Columbia county. It was not until he had reached the age of seventeen years that he was able to attend school, other than the very poor rural schools of Columbia county. Although the family was in straitened financial circumstances, the parents made an effort to give each child some little opportunity of attending school but this chance did not come to Harvey C. Couch until 1894, when as one of his biographers said: "He entered the Magnolia public school, only to find himself embarrassed and almost discouraged from the fact that the other pupils of his age were so far ahead of him. This was really the turning point in his life, however, and Couch gives full credit to a country school teacher for whatever success has been his. It happened that this forty-dollars-per-month school teacher had recently graduated from college and, having been compelled to work his own way through school, had a sympathetic feeling for boys who had not had a fair chance. Through the advice and assistance of this young school teacher, who helped him during school hours and evenings, Harvey Couch was able to carry two grades at once, and at the end of the session had a general average of ninety-seven, being the highest in the school. The school teacher has succeeded along with Couch and while the former pupil is now head of one of the largest corporations of its kind in the entire southwest, the former country teacher is now governor of the great state of Texas—Hon. Pat M. Neff." Two years covered the entire period of Mr. Couch's school training, for serious illness in the family made it necessary for him again to contribute to the support of the household and he obtained a clerkship in a drug store in Magnolia at fifty-five cents per day. With his entrance into the business world he realized how necessary and how valuable is an education for young men who wish to succeed, and after seeing an advertisement in a magazine concerning a correspondence school he began studying through that method, notwithstanding his hours in the drug store were from 6:30 in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. He completed the correspondence course and successfully passed a United States government examination for railway mail clerks with such a high rating that he was immediately given a position and sent to St. Louis. The other mail clerks had considerable fun at the expense of the "green" country boy, but he applied himself with such diligence and capability to his tasks that after a short time he was made clerk in charge, thus being promoted ahead of those who had found him amusing by lack of his experience of city life and customs. After a time Harvey C. Couch was transferred to a run between Memphis and Texarkana, where he became greatly interested in the building of a long distance telephone line along the right-of-way of the Cotton Belt road. From early boyhood he had been interested in things mechanical and he evolved the idea of establishing a telephone system in some small town. He had no time on his run between Memphis and Texarkana, however, to visit the smaller towns in search of a favorable location to launch such an enterprise and he, therefore, sought a transfer to a little run between McNeil, Arkansas, and Bienville, Louisiana, the latter place being a village of six hundred population without telegraph or telephone service and with only one mail a day. He paid the sum of fifty dollars to the clerk on that run to make the exchange and this practically exhausted his savings. After considerable persuasion he induced the-village postmaster to assist him in promoting a telephone line but as neither of them had any capital, they sold coupons for telephone service in advance and thus succeeded in raising one hundred dollars. Wire was purchased on sixty days' time from a hardware traveling salesman with whom Mr. Couch had long been acquainted and their one hundred dollars was invested in the construction of twelve miles of telephone line between Bienville and Arcadia, trees being used for the poles. The receipts during the first two months were only sufficient to pay for the wire but after that they began to build additional lines through the means of selling service coupons in advance. The business grew rapidly and at the end of the first year the country postmaster "decided that the plan of extensions would eventually bust the whole concern" and he sold out to Mr. Couch, accepting his note for one thousand dollars. It was then that Mr. Couch secured the cooperation of Dr. H. A. Longino of Magnolia, who made an investment of fifteen hundred dollars in the enterprise and loaned Mr. Couch an equal sum. The turning point was thus passed and within eight years Mr. Couch sold the business to the Southwestern Bell Telephone system for more than one million, five hundred thousand dollars. Naturally while engaged in the development of this mammoth enterprise Mr. Couch was also studying the question of other public utilities and believed that success could be won in combining various public utilities into one immense business enterprise. Accordingly he interested his associates in the electric light and power business, purchasing the plants at Malvern, Arkadelphia, Camden and Magnolia and organizing them into the Arkansas Light & Power Company. His vision reached a practical fulfillment when at the end of the first year it was learned that the gross income amounted to seventy-five thousand dollars, while in 1920 it was in excess of two million dollars. At the beginning the largest engine in use was one hundred and fifty horse power, while today the largest owned by the corporation is eighty-five hundred horse power. The Bankers Trust News in a biography of Mr. Couch, speaking of his business career, said: "From the four plants originally owned, the Arkansas Light & Power Company, with its allied corporations, has grown to be one of the largest of its kind in the entire southwest and supplies light and power to more than one hundred thousand people, including not only the third largest city in the state of Arkansas but thousands of families in the rural districts. The largest unit of this great company is located at Pine Bluff and cost in excess of one million dollars. From this one plant alone is supplied light, power, water and transportation to the people of Pine Bluff; and light and power to the citizens of Altheimer, Wabaseka, Humphrey, Stuttgart, DeWitt, England, Sherrill, Tucker, Lonoke, Carlisle, Scotts, and even to the Dixie Cotton Oil Mills of North Little Rock. as well as to more than two hundred rice irrigation wells, cotton gins, cotton oil mills and other industries in the surrounding country. Over the four hundred and seventy-five miles of copper strands radiating from the central stations of this company is sent the energy utilized to produce, manufacture, mill or mine practically every need of man; rice, cotton, corn, wheat, cottonseed oil, water, lumber, coal, steel, and even—buttons. The latest acquisition of this company was the Picron power plant, erected by the government in East Little Rock during the war. This company also operates many independent plants all over the state, and it is the intention of Mr. Couch to eventually connect all of these plants into one great system, building very large modern power houses that will enable his company to place these modern conveniences where they may be available to hundreds of thousands of Arkansas people who do not now have such advantages. Starting without an education, without resources, and practically without friends, it occurs to me that the secret of the success of H. C. Couch lies in his determination, honesty, and the happy faculty of making friends of all those with whom he comes in contact. Through all his business life he has had the implicit confidence of business men and banks, and has successfully weathered many financial storms, and he is perhaps better known today in the great financial centers of the east than any other Arkansas man. In 1906 a railway mail clerk, today president of one of the largest corporations of its kind in the southwest, director in two of the leading banks in the state of Arkansas, and interested in many other financial enterprises—Can you beat it?" Mr. Couch has been the president of the Arkansas Light & Power Company throughout the period of its existence and the success of the undertaking is the direct outcome of his enterprise, his far vision, his progressiveness and his indefatigable energy. In his home life, too, Mr. Couch is most happily situated. He wedded Jessie Johnson, a daughter of W. M. Johnson of Athens, Louisiana, and five children, four sons and a daughter, have been born of this marriage: Johnson, Harvey, Kirke, Catherine and Verne. Mr. Couch is a Mason, belonging to the blue lodge, chapter and consistory and also to the Mystic Shrine. His interest in the moral development of the community is shown in his membership in the Methodist Episcopal church, South, in which he is serving as a steward, and in the fact that he is a state trustee of the Young Men's Christian Association. He is likewise a member and chairman of. the board of directors of the Henderson-Brown College and is president of the Chamber of Commerce at Pine Bluff, while during the war he served as United States fuel administrator for Arkansas. He has ever been actuated by a most progressive spirit and he erected the first radiophone broadcasting station in Arkansas at Pine Bluff, giving regular radiophone programs. Any feature of stable progress and improvement elicits his attention and wins his support, especially if it contributes to the general upbuilding and advancement of the community. He is one o£ the most prominent residents of Pine Bluff and his labors have always been of a character that have advanced the public welfare as well as his individual interests. He may well be called a human dynamo, a captain of industry, or any other term that indicates wonderful creative power intelligently directed. The point is that he started out with almost every handicap but he has arrived and is today accounted one of the foremost business men in his native state. Additional Comments: Citation: Centennial History of Arkansas Volume II Chicago-Little Rock: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company 1922 Photo: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ar/jefferson/photos/bios/white76bs.jpg File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ar/jefferson/bios/white76bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/arfiles/ File size: 13.4 Kb