Doherty, Henry Latham

Doherty, Henry Latham

(1870–1939) utilities executive/engineer; born in Columbus, Ohio. Forced by family circumstances to leave school at age 12, he started working as an office boy for the Columbia Gas Company. By 1896 Emerson McMillin & Company, the New York banking firm that owned several utilities including Columbia Gas, had made him chief engineer and general manager of all the McMillin properties. In 1900 Doherty presented a famous paper on utility rates to the National Electric Association. In 1905 he formed his own company to provide various services to utilities and in 1910 he formed Cities Service, a holding company for his own acquisitions, numbering 53 companies in 1913 alone. He continued his engineering innovations in natural gas development and oil production, earning 140 patents in his lifetime, and he was equally ingenious in his financial transactions.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.