CHAPTER X.
Reason for Submitting Press Sketches of Mr. Plant—Descriptive America, December, 1886—City Items, December, 1886—Railroad Topics—Home Journal, New York, March, 1896—F. G. De Fontain in same Journal—Ocala Evening Times June, 1896—Express Gazette.
IN the following chapter are given a few press notices of Mr. Plant and his work in the South, because they contain reliable information of some of that work which we have left to them to chronicle, and because they are public expressions of the appreciation of that work and of the justly high esteem, and friendly regard in which the worker is held by the people among whom and for whom he has spent the best part of his life. Instead of a brief chapter, a volume of such complimentary sketches might be presented, written in even stronger language than is here used and by masters in the art of writing. But these few will suffice to show the deep interest of the people in the life and work of their friend and benefactor, Mr. H. B. Plant.
The following extract is taken from the Florida number of Descriptive America.
RAILROAD AND EXPRESS PRESIDENT.
“In our Wisconsin number we gave the life-history of one man who, beginning as a farmer’s son, had, by his energy, ability, and integrity, come to occupy a position of great power, wealth, and usefulness, and we emphasized the point, that, while he had been wonderfully successful, his highest claim to our admiration, lay in the fact that, whenever the opportunity offered, he had sought the prosperity of the nation, the state, or the city of his adoption, and had made his own gain and increasing wealth subordinate to the public weal. In this number we have some similar characters, who, if their wealth does not equal that of the great banker and railroad king, have at least followed his good example.
“Such men are always modest, their achievements seem to them very small, compared with what they might and should have done, and they shrink from publicity with genuine dread. One of these men is the subject of our present sketch, Mr. H. B. Plant.
“Mr. Plant is of pure Puritan stock; his earliest American ancestors left England about 1640, and if they were not among the little company who came with John Davenport to Quinnipiac, afterward called New Haven, they followed very soon after. They settled in Branford, Connecticut, a town lying between New Haven and Guilford, at which place some of Davenport’s most eminent men soon established themselves. The Plants of Branford were a good family, and they have always borne a high reputation through the eight or nine generations which have elapsed since they first established themselves in Branford. They were intelligent, thoughtful farmers, industrious, sound thinkers, orthodox in faith, and leading those quiet country lives, of which the old New England towns presented so many examples. The village minister was a man greatly reverenced by all his people, and if a youth of more than ordinary promise could be instructed under his direction, it was something to be proud of.
“To one of these Branford families, the representative Plant family in the town, several children were born in the earlier decades of the present century; one of them, H. B. Plant, gladdening their hearts in October, 1819. He must have been a boy of considerable promise, for after the usual course of study in the District Schools, not at that time of a very high grade, he spent several terms in the Branford Academy, then under the oversight of the Branford pastor, Rev. Timothy P. Gillett, a man of high scholarship and great aptitude for teaching. Whether he had any aspirations for a collegiate course, we do not know; but he did not rest content, till he had completed his course of study with John E. Lovell, of New Haven, the founder of the Lancasterian system of instruction in America, and, at that time, the most celebrated teacher in the country.
“His school days over, Mr. Plant soon found employment on the steamboat line plying between New Haven and New York. Very soon, one of the first express lines ever established in this country, known as Beecher’s New York and New Haven Express, was started, and young Plant became interested in it, and from that time to the present has always been largely engaged in the express business. His first important interest in it was with Adams Express. In 1853, he went to the South, and established expresses upon the southern railroads, as a branch enterprise of Adams Express. In 1861, he organized the Southern Express Co., and became its president, and has continued so to the present time. He is also president of the Texas Express Co. In 1853, he visited Florida for the first time, for the benefit of the health of an invalid wife. There was no means of communication with Jacksonville, except by steamers up the St. John’s. The place was small and the accommodations meagre, but the fine climate and mild and balmy air were the means of prolonging her life many years, and from that time he made yearly visits thither. During these visits the place grew, and he saw the necessity for railway communication with that and many other points in Florida; but he devoted most of his attention to his extensive express business, until 1879, though owning large blocks of railroad stocks, particularly in the Georgia and Florida Railways. In 1879, with some friends, he purchased the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad of Georgia, and subsequently organized the Savannah, Florida, and Western Railroad, of which he became president. Soon afterwards he extended this railroad to the Chattahoochee River, and he also constructed a new line from Way Cross to Jacksonville.