THE CONTROVERSIAL BOOK OF MORMON STUDIES Elder B. H. Roberts undertook in the early 1920s have been thoroughly treated in Studies of the Book of Mormon, edited by Brigham D. Madsen. Roberts's work addressed, in part, questions about the Book of Mormon's historicity raised by a Mr. Couch of Washington, D.C.

Couch's questions were initially sent to Elder James E. Talmage with a cover letter dated 22 August 1921 from William E. Riter at the U.S. Experiment Station in Salina, Utah.

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Brigham Madsen has suggested that Roberts's examination of these questions altered his views on the historicity of the Book of Mormon. Others dispute that conclusion. One thing is certain. Couch had considerable impact on Roberts. In addition, his questions anticipated modern Book of Mormon study on Native American ancestry, philology, domesticated animals, metallurgy, and textiles.

Who was this Mr. Couch whose questions so intrigued B. H. Roberts? Using the District of Columbia Directory for 1921, Brigham Madsen offered five possible candidates: Arthur O. Couch, a U.S. treasury department auditor; Frank B. Couch, a district inspector; James F. Couch, a Department of Agriculture chemist; John J. Couch, a laboratory technician; and Ralph F. Couch, a newspaper correspondent. Was Mr. Couch one of these five men?

Direct evidence on this point is speculative except for Riter's 22 August 1921 letter, which said simply, "Mr. Couch of Washington D.C. has been studying the Book of Mormon and submits the enclosed questions." Apparently Roberts knew nothing of Couch's identity not found in Couch's questions or in Riter's cover letter. Nothing identifies Couch further in subsequent correspondence between Riter and Roberts, nor in the famous Wesley P. Lloyd diary entry on the Couch/Roberts matter. Fortunately, the circumstances surrounding Riter's employment allow us to determine Couch's identity: the chemist James Fitton Couch.

Long before I read Couch's questions, I became acquainted with the professional work of James Fitton Couch in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). I filled the same position in the USD A which he had occupied several decades earlier. We both were chemists in USDA poisonous plant research investigations.

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Both James F. Couch and William E. Riter were at the Salina Station in August 1921, according to USDA poisonous plant research records. Records of August collections from that location's plant collection record book include some observations made by Riter about the time Couch's questions were sent to James E. Talmage at LDS headquarters. A group photograph taken 5 August 1921 at the Salina Station includes James F. Couch, then age thirty-three, and William E. Riter, twenty.

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James F. Couch was a scholarly man. His achievements show him to have possessed a keen intellect and an analytical mind—one who might be expected to ask thought-provoking questions about the Book of Mormon. He served for three decades as a chemist for the USDA in the Bureau of Animal Industries in Washington, D.C. He investigated poisonous plants in the 1920s and 1930s and worked later as a chemist in analytical and physical chemistry investigations at the USDA Eastern Regional Research Laboratory in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania.

Born in 1888 in Somerville, Massachusetts, to J. D. Couch and Ellen M. Cary, James Fitton Couch attended Harvard, where he obtained an A.B. degree in 1913. He then served as an industrial chemist from 1913 to 1917, at which time he became employed by the USDA. During his long career with USDA, he held joint appointments as an instructor in chemistry at George Washington University, 1919-20, and later as a professor of biology at National University. Meanwhile he found time to complete both an A.M. (1923) and a Ph.D. (1926) at American University.

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The circumstantial evidence indicates that it was James Fitton Couch who drafted the questions that so interested B. H. Roberts. In a sense Couch's questions became the stimulus for perhaps the most friendly, in-depth, in-house, critical examination of Mormon scripture by an LDS general authority ever undertaken. If Roberts's studies are ever officially used to help provide answers to such troublesome questions, the important role played by the chemist and scholarly reader of the Book of Mormon, James Fitton Couch, should be widely acknowledged.