The Life of Henry Bradley Plant / Founder and President of the Plant System of Railroads and Steamships and Also of the Southern Express Company

by G. Hutchinson Smyth

With the banquet at the Aragon, tendered to President Plant by the directors of the Exposition Company and the citizens of Atlanta, the festivities directly incident to “Plant System Day” were brought to a close. This history, however, would be incomplete without reference to the Southern Express Company, to which Mr. Plant has been pleased to allude as his “first love.” It numbers among its officers some of the men whom Mr. Plant had in mind when he said on Sunday morning, October 27th, “I see here present those who were with me in troublous times and bore with me the heat and burden of the fight,” and this may be considered a fitting place to give a brief history of the company as published in the Constitution of October 29, 1895.

From the Atlanta Constitution, Tuesday, October 29, 1895:

“Among the thousands who gathered at the Exposition yesterday to do honor to Mr. Henry B. Plant, the great ‘man of affairs,’ the officers and employees of the Southern Express Company formed a notable group, the central and most prominent figure of which was Mr. M. J. O’Brien, the vice-president and general manager. It was fitting that this great enterprise should be represented by its most prominent officials and a large delegation of its employees on this day, for it was as an express company employee that Mr. Plant began life, and the history of the express business in the South is almost identical with Mr. Plant’s great success. It was also appropriate that the representatives of the great army of Southern Express Company employees should be headed by the man whose master mind and admirable executive ability have contributed so largely to every success of the mammoth enterprise over which he presides with such marked distinction, for the history of the Southern Express Company is not only the history of Mr. Plant but of Mr. O’Brien, since the latter gentleman has been closely identified with the express business of Mr. Plant for the past thirty-five years, and its achievements have largely been his own.

“HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN EXPRESS COMPANY.

“On July 5, 1861, a charter was granted for the Southern Express Company for fourteen years, with H. B. Plant as President; R. B. Bullock, Superintendent of the Eastern Division; E. Hulbert, Superintendent of the Central, and D. P. Ellwood, Superintendent of the Western Division, who, however, shortly resigned, and was succeeded by A. B. Small, with James Shuter as Assistant Superintendent.

“As the Federal forces advanced into Dixie the Southern Express Company abandoned its lines, which were immediately utilized by the Adams Express Company. In fact, the Southern Express Company was operated under difficulties throughout those belligerent times, arising from the changing lines of armies, destructions of railroads, and from the conscription acts, until express employees were exempted from service in the army and navy.

“At the close of the war another source of danger presented itself. Gangs of disbanded soldiery and raiding parties, ever ready to appropriate portable property wherever it could be found, in many cases plundered the express offices, their horses being taken and nothing valuable left. But it’s a long lane that has no turn. A reaction soon set in, and the marvellous prosperity of the ‘Sunny South’ has been only equalled by the growth and development of the Southern Express Company. To-day its service extends from Richmond, Louisville, and St. Louis on the North; Charleston and Savannah on the East; Springfield, Missouri, and Houston, Texas, on the West, and New Orleans, Mobile, and Tampa, Florida, on the South, reaching twelve States and embracing about three thousand agencies, with a through line to New York and direct communication with Cuba.

“In 1875, a renewal of the company’s charter was applied for and granted, and, in 1886, the Georgia Legislature granted the company a charter for thirty years from December 21st of that year. The little concern organized at Augusta, Georgia, in 1861, has now become one of the strongest and most successful express companies in the United States.

“The Constitution to-day publishes excellent portraits of General Manager M. J. O’Brien, Assistant General Manager T. W. Leary, Traffic Manager C. L. Loop, and Superintendent W. W. Hulbert, all of whom have been intimately identified with the growth and development of the Southern Express Company.

“General Manager O’Brien began service with the Adams Express Company at Memphis, in 1859. He next served as way-bill clerk and then as messenger, being later promoted to the cashier’s office at New Orleans. Evincing a remarkable aptitude for the express business, he was next appointed agent at Montgomery, Alabama, and, in rapid order, successively became President Plant’s secretary, secretary of the Southern Express Company, general superintendent, general manager, and vice-president and general manager.