NCEC History

History of Navarro County Electric Cooperative

In the early 1920's farm leaders began pressing for rural electrification.  If existing investor-owned power companies wouldn't help the farmers, the farmers would help themselves. They began to organize their own electric cooperatives.  Farmers in Navarro County started to work in 1936 to organize a cooperative to serve their needs. The first recorded meeting of the incorporators and directors of the Navarro County Electric Cooperative, Inc. was held in Beauford Jester's office in the Jester Building in the city of Corsicana, TX, Navarro County at 2:30 pm on the 26th day of November 1937.

The first official meeting consisted of election of officers and board members. The board members present at this meeting were E. P. Estes, elected president, L. I. Griffin, elected secretary, and the remaining board members were William J. Bain, E. B. Dawson, Earl M. Dawson, Burney Moore, and Robert P. Garret. The Chairman, E. P. Estes, reported at this meeting that the original copy of the Articles of Incorporation were filed on November 19th, 1937 in the office of the Secretary of State, and that under the date of November 19th, 1937, the Secretary of State had issued a Certificate of Incorporation to the incorporators.

NCEC Bylaws

Beauford H. Jester was appointed by the board to be counsel of the new Corporation. The Cooperative was organized to be a private, non-profit enterprise, locally owned and managed, and incorporated under state law, to be controlled by the members it serves, with each member having one vote in the affairs of the Cooperative. The cooperative membership elects a director for a designated area to be their representative on the board. The first step after the organization was to secure funds to build electric distribution lines in the rural areas. The funds were provided under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) as a lending agency for the federal government. The first request for funds was $100,000 to build 92 miles of distribution line in Navarro and Hill counties.

NOTE: Todays cost would be well over $2,000,000.

In 1944, Navarro joined Brazos Electric Cooperative becoming one of the 16 owners of what is now the largest Generation and Transmission Cooperative in Texas. Navarro purchases its wholesale electricity from Brazos.

The Cooperatives first office was in the Jester Building on West 5th Avenue in Corsicana. The first building was at 214 N. Main Street. Later in 1949, the Cooperative purchased the property at FM 744 and Highway 22 for its pole yard and communication tower, and then built a new office-warehouse facility at 319 West 7th in 1950. In 1975, the Cooperative moved to its present location on west Highway 22 on the western edge of Corsicana. In 2007, the Cooperative added approximately 3,000 square feet to the Hwy 22 facility.

From this humble beginning, the Cooperative has grown to almost 3,110 miles of line serving more than 18,359 meters in Navarro, Hill, Ellis, Freestone, and Limestone counties.

Past and Present Managers of NCEC