10/09/2025
John Bouchard & Sons (JBS) is celebrating its 125th year of building and sustaining hardworking infrastructure. Drive any street in the Mid-South, and there’s a good chance you will pass over manhole covers, valve boxes or drainage grates branded with the JBS diamond. If you haven’t noticed them yet, you probably will now.
From the first refrigeration systems in The Hermitage Hotel and Vanderbilt Hospital to advanced manufacturing infrastructure across the modern Mid-South, the JBS tradition of innovation and excellence has helped create and maintain the systems that facilitate flourishing communities. Headquartered in its original location near Nashville’s capitol hill, with its foundry facility only a few blocks away, JBS operates branch offices in Knoxville, TN, Elizabethtown, KY, and Evansville, IN.
“We’re still here because we hold ourselves to high standards – get it right the first time, treat customers as we hope to be treated, tell the truth and be like family to each other,” said fifth-generation Owner, Lisa Bouchard Morgan. “These values organically grew through the mentoring and camaraderie of our great people. The genuine diversity of our capabilities in 10 unique trades evolved to meet customer needs. The agility this brings to our clients is unique.”
Begun as a forge metal works shop on Harrison St. and adapting as industry and technologies have changed, JBS now provides equipment sales and service, iron construction castings, construction and machine services to thousands of commercial, institutional, industrial and municipal customers. Over 12 decades, the diversified business has equipped places like Churchill Downs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Eastman Chemical, See Rock City, Redstone Arsenal, Vanderbilt Hospital, Metro Water, Bridgestone Americas, Coca-Cola Bottling, The Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Starbucks stores, Memphis International Airport and thousands in between, each receiving customized solutions. Like their manhole covers, John Bouchard & Sons is an integral, yet often unnoticed component of the Mid-South’s infrastructure.
“It’s really amazing to think of the people that we’ve had at this company, people with incredible skills and work ethic and talents – a trade and a skill – something that our society is going to always need,” said William D. Morgan, who has served as company President since 2001.
Bouchard’s commitment to community has been as enduring as its infrastructure work. JBS employees have always given back to their communities, from contributions during WWI and WWII, to Jack Bouchard’s mid-century Rotary Club leadership in establishing the Tennessee Girl’s Ranch, and from participation in Extreme Makeover’s rebuilding of Lighthouse Christian School after the Nashville Flood to current support of dozens of local charities. The Tennessee Legislature honored the company with “A Resolution to recognize the 125th anniversary of John Bouchard & Sons,” which Governor Bill Lee recently signed. JBS is also a Woman Business Enterprise, certified by The Governor’s Office of Diversity Business Enterprise (GO-DBE) for the State of Tennessee.
A book from Grandin Hood Publishers will chronicle the JBS journey – from John Bouchard’s 19th century immigrant American Dream story to the modern industrial projects of today. Rich with colorful characters and dangerous episodes, risks taken and loyalties held, this book offers a vivid display of the John Bouchard & Sons story as it weaves through the history of Nashville and the Mid-South. The firm has persevered for 125 years, through natural disasters, economic depressions and labor tensions. Twice – in 1941 and again in 1969 – new leaders in their relative youth had to take the helm of the company unexpectedly. When the fourth generation of family leadership passed to the fifth in 2011, the torch-passing now held a greater light. John E. Bouchard, III’s personal transformation as a follower of Jesus Christ had reshaped the company culture over his half-century of leadership.
About John Bouchard & Sons
Begun in 1900 as a Nashville machine shop, the company incorporated in 1913. Today as a fifth-generation, family-owned, diversified business it serves modern industry through four fully-integrated divisions: Equipment Sales & Service, Foundry, Machine Services and Construction. For more information, visit https://jbouchard.com.
