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Captain William L.
Couch
November 20, 1850-April 21,
1890
abt 1888
And
Cynthia
E. Gordon
Couch
1841-1918
William Lewis Couch was born
November 20, 1850, in Wilkes
County,
North
Carolina
the eldest
child
of Meshach H. and
Mary
Bryan Couch. After
the end of the Civil War
M.
H. Couch moved the
family to Kansas, where
William grew to
manhood.
While receiving
only
a rudimentary
education,
he was always
an avid
reader.
Couch married
his sweetheart, Cynthia
E. Gordon, a
Quaker
eight years his senior on
February 28,
1871 at
Olathe,
Kansas. In 1871 the couple
located in Butler County near Douglass,
Kansas, where they
purchased a farm. After the
railroad extended
its
lines from Emporia to
Wichita, Couch followed
the line and took
advantage of many
business opportunities.
He
became a fixture in
the
Wichita business
community after 1874,
selling grain, operating
an
elevator, trading and
selling horses and
mules, and running a
combination hardware and
grocery store. But a change in markets
coupled
with other
financial setbacks cost him much of his
hard-earned fortune.
After losing the grocery
store and paying many
of
his outstanding
debts, he was financially
depleted, but he still
adequately provided for
his family, deriving a
steady income from
the
livestock business.
In
fall 1879, after
hearing David L. Payne
talk
about the "free
land"
available for
homesteads in the "Oklahoma
Country," Couch became a
follower of the
boomer leader. Payne was
most convincing about
the fertility of soil,
abundance of game, and
other wonders of
the
land. Couch made
several
financial
contributions
to Payne's
colony,
helping to fund the
fledgling
enterprise,
and
became
familiar with
the
country, learning the
choice
locations where
he could claim his
future
homestead. Couch
believed Payne's
assertion that these
were public lands free
for the
taking, despite
government warnings to
the
contrary. The family
returned to Douglass,
Kansas, in 1882 so that
William could be
closer to his father.
The elder Couch looked
after the family while
his son became more
active in Payne's
colony. By that time, the
family had
grown
to five
children: Ira, Minnie
Alice, Eugene,
Perley,
and Albert. Couch's
service to the boomers
earned him a
leadership
position. In
early
February 1883 he
led the "Camp Alice"
expedition to the
Oklahoma country after the
boomers' earlier
settlement ventures had
failed. But this
attempt, too, failed when
the
army arrived,
arrested
the would-be
settlers, and placed them
under
guard at Fort Reno. Couch entered the
forbidden land again in
August 1883 and in
April
1884. During the
April 1884 trip Meshach
Couch
staked a claim
near the present
University of
Oklahoma
Health
Sciences complex
in Oklahoma City. David
Payne's untimely death
on
November 28, 1884,
thrust Couch into sole
leadership of the
boomers,
a roll he did
not
want.After Payne's
death, his associate
William L.
Couch
assumed his leadership
role.
Couch, in
December
1884, moved
the Boomers
into Indian
Territory and founded
Camp Stillwater on
December
12, 1884.
President James
Garfield sent a small
detachment of troops to
escort
Couch out
of
the
Territory.
However,
when
the
soldiers arrived, 200
armed men met
the military and refused to be
moved. After
600
reinforcements
arrived, the
Boomers
were given the
option of
leaving
within 48 hours or being
attacked. After the
Boomers refused to
leave, the commanders
moved
their troops
across the Kansas border
and cut
off Couch's
supply
lines. Soon, their food was gone, and
Couch and the other
Boomers were escorted back
to
Kansas.
In
response to Couch's claims
that the
federal
government was
discriminating against
them, on March
3, 1885,
Congress approved the
Indian Appropriations
Act of 1885. This act
authorized negations for
the cession of unoccupied lands
belonging
to
the Creek
Indians,
the Seminole Indians, and the
Cherokee
Indians. It was at this
point that Couch
stopped
being a colonist
and
became a
lobbyist.
Couch would
spend
four years in
Washington
D.C trying to
open Oklahoma.
However,
many
full-blooded
Indians from the Five
Civilized Tribes lobbied
against
Couch's actions. It would not be
until
January 1889
when
things
would change.
Pleasant
Porter led a group of
Creeks who
offered
to
sell their unoccupied
lands. Within
weeks, the
Unassigned
Lands were
sold to the
United
States. These Unassigned Lands
embraced
just under
3,000,000 acres
(12,000 km2)
in the heart of
Indian
Territory.
On
March
2, 1889,
Congress passed an
amendment with the
Indian
Appropriations Act
of
1889 which provided
for the opening of
homesteading
settlements
in Unassigned Lands,
to
be known as
Oklahoma.
President
Benjamin
Harrison announced that
Oklahoma would
be
opened
on April
22 via land run.
The land run was to be
held at noon and
was
open to all
people
of at
least 21
years of age.
Land Run and the Sooners
Oklahoma was opened to white settlement on
April
22, 1889 by
the Land Run of
1889,
the first land run in the territory's history.
Over 50,000 people entered the
lands on
the
first day,
among them
several thousand former
slaves and descendants
of slaves. Couch and
his Boomers, now
numbering some 14,000,
also
entered the race.
Those
who entered
Oklahoma
before the official
start of the race were
labeled
Sooners.
When
the race
began
at noon,
thousands of
horses, wagons, buggies,
carts, and
others rushed
across to Oklahoma.
The
law-abiders
fought with
the
Sooners
on several
instances.
Although he made the
land
run, staked his
claim on
property in
present day downtown Oklahoma
City, and was elected
the city's first mayor,
he did not live to
receive title to the
property, nor did his
widow or his
heirs.
The Death of Captain William
Couch
William
Couch, himself a
Sooner,
was
shot and wounded by a legal
pioneer. Couch
died on
April
21, 1890, as
a
result of his wounds, and was
laid to
rest the
following day upon the
beautiful homestead
where he had
hoped to pass
his
declining years, and
for which he endured the
hardships of pioneer
life and braved the
opposition of the United
States government. An
immense concourse of
people attended the
funeral of the dead
hero. The Methodist church
was filled to its
utmost
capacity with the
grief-stricken friends and
relatives. At
the
close
of an
impressive service the sorrowful
audience repaired
to the grounds adjacent to
the church, where
its numbers were
augmented by fully five
thousand people from
both the city and the
adjoining country.
Here
the Hon. Sidney
Clarke, an intimate friend
and co-worker of
the
martyred Couch, paid the following eloquent
and
pathetic tribute to his memory:
"Death is an
impenetrable mystery.
Today we are in the
bloom of health; tomorrow
we step out
into the
great hereafter. Like the
endless cycles of
time,
the generations of men
march with measured
tread from the
cradle to
the
grave. A
few days ago I clasped the warm
hand of our
dead friend in mine, and with
mingled hopes
and fears
bade him
good-bye.
Yesterday I
returned to find him in the
embrace
of death, and today I come to join
with you in
honoring his
memory
and watering with tears
his new-made
grave.
"But,
oh,
my friends, how
feeble
is human language to express the anguish
of
this hour! Remembering the heroic spirit of
him whose mortal
frame
we this day bury
beneath the soil he loved so
well, gladly
would
I say
something to cheer the hearts that
are bruised
and
bleeding with unutterable
sorrow. But well I know that none but Him
who
holds in His keeping
the mysteries of the universe can assuage
the
grief caused by this
sad
calamity.
"Not only in
the
sacred circle of his
family and friends—to us
who knew him but
to love him—but to millions
throughout the
country,
the story of W.
L. Couch—the story of
the life now gone—will
be a lesson, a poem, a
tragedy. It
speaks to us
of bravery, of
generosity, of charity, of
integrity, of
sincerity
of purpose, of the royalty of truth, of the
sanctity of friendship,
of the nobility of
manhood, of love and
hope, of joy and sorrow,
of triumph and of adversities. It tells us
that a noble purpose in
any life—unyielding
for
the right—will
master the most difficult
problems, and snatch the grandest
victories
for mankind
from the jaws of defeat. It tells us of a man
of undaunted courage,
and who knew no fear,
was generous to a fault,
and that he gave up
his
own life rather than take in self-defense
the life of
another.
"No man
knew better
than
Captain Couch the dangerous
character of his assailant; no man knew
better
than he the
sacred right of self-defense in all civilized
society; no man was more
capable of defending
his life, and yet so
great was his
magnanimity
that he carefully evaded any act
which
would
put in the
position of the aggressor.
"I
cannot now speak in detail of the life of
Captain Couch. Born in the
state of North
Carolina
in 1850, he moved to Johnson county, Kansas,
in 1866, and four years
later settled at
Douglas in Butler county.
In 1880 he became
fully
identified with Payne's Oklahoma colony, and
after the death of
Captain Payne in 1884, he
was elected
president.
Through all
the years
that followed,
up to the spring of 1889, you
know with
what
pertinacity, with what
unwearied diligence, he
led
the advance guard
of
civilization against
the craft and barbarism
which had closed
Oklahoma to settlement. To
the world at large
he
was deemed the leader
of
a forlorn hope, but to him and to his
associates it was the
path of duty and the way
to victory. He
believed
than and to the day of
his death, as I believe
now, that
Oklahoma has
been in
every proper
sense a part of the public domain
since the
treaties of 1866. But mindful of the
interpretation of the
law by the executive
department of the
government, in December,
1885, he went
to
Washington and commenced the
great work before
Congress which bore its
fruit one year ago today
in the opening of
Oklahoma to
settlement.
Alas, that on this
anniversary of that
notable event, and on the
day when the American Congress, aroused to
action by the movement
of which he was the
conspicuous and trusted
leader, has crowned
this
beautiful territory with the majesty of
civil government, he is
not here to witness
the
great
event!
"For more
than five years I have been
intimately
associated
with Captain Couch in the work he had in hand,
and I know how great were his efforts and
earnest his purpose to
dedicate Oklahoma to
free homes and to a free
people. I know there
was no reserve in
his
friendship for me, and I
know there was none
in
mine for him. If I ever
looked into any man's
heart; if I ever
comprehended the value
of courage, sincerity
and integrity, in human
character; if I ever
correctly divined the
motives and objects of a
single human
being, I did in the case of my
dead friend. It
is not
too much to say
that he
was made of the
material of which heroes are
made. He
looked into the
future with the grasp
of the most
comprehensive statesman. He saw
before other men saw the future
state of
Oklahoma, rich
in all the attributes of wealth,
civilization,
and
progress. He saw with
prophetic eye the
millions
of happy homes
that
will dot this fair land in the years to
come.
He
comprehended
the transcendent results
which,
under the beneficent
influence of our free
institutions, will
follow the founding here in
the center
of the continent of a new American
state.
"Its vast
possibilities
were as plain to his
vision as the
rays of a beautiful morning sun.
He
appreciated the
majestic forces
of Christian
civilization marching on
and on to the
subjugation of a
continent. He exemplified the
spirit of
Whittier's
poem:
" 'Each rude and jostling
fragment
Soon its fitting place shall
find;
The raw material
of a state,
Its
muscle and its
mind.
And westward still,
the
star that leads
The new world in its
train
Has tipped with
fire the icy
spurs
Of
many a mountain chain.'
"The name and fame of Capt. W. L. Couch
will be indissolubly connected with the
history of Oklahoma. Only
those who did not
know
the man will ever question the purity of his
motives or the grandeur
of his character. If
there be those who
would
have deprived him
and
his family a home on
Oklahoma soil after
his
long and weary struggle
for the right, after
his sacrifices and
sufferings in behalf of the
people of Oklahoma
of
to-day and of
to-morrow, after his battle
to the death with monopoly and fraud,
let them
be left to the
universal execration of that portion of
mankind who despise
ingratitude and cover with
immortal
honor the
unselfish
heroes of the
human
race. . . .
"In his
last hours he had no
word of reproach for the
destroyer of his
life.
When the grim messenger
of death held him in no uncertain grasp, he
was as calm and fearless
as when in the best
of
health. . .
.
"Brave,
generous, heroic friend! Noble in life,
true
to duty and to
humanity, what a sublime lesson you have left
to
us, and to those who come after us, in the
presence of death! We
enroll your name with
the heroes of this age
and of all the ages who
have dared to
suffer and to die for principle,
for
friends, for
country,
for the good of
their fellow men."
William's wife, Cynthia died on
March 2, 1918 at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and
is
buried at Fairlawn
cemetery.
Mrs. Couch, Here Since '85, Is
Dead
Mrs. C. E. Couch, 74
years old, one of
Oklahoma's pioneer women,
died yesterday at her home near Choctaw
after
having been an
invalid for nearly eighteen months. Mrs.
Couch was the widow of W. L. Couch, leader or
Payne's colony after
the
death of Captain
Payne. Mrs. Couch's
husband died in
1900. Though Mrs.
Couch's husband came
into Oklahoma several
times, the first tim in
1878, she did not accompany him until
1885. Mrs. Couch
leaves two daughters,
Mrs. Minnie Alexander,
Columbia, Cal., and
Miss
Irene Couch, who lived with her. Also
three sons, Ira L., Choctaw, Alvert C.,
Luther, former county
commissioner, and Eugene
Couch, Choctaw.
Source: The
Oklahoman
March 3, 1918
Page 22
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