Jefferson-Columbia County ArArchives Biographies.....White, Foster O. 
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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


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