Plant, Henry Bradley, 1819-1899

Railroad and steamship magnate.

Henry Bradley Plant took over the express parcels portion of his late father's business, transferring that portion from steamship to railroad. He moved to Jacksonville, Fla. in 1853 when his wife, Ellen Elizabeth (Blackstone) Plant was ordered south for her health. Impressed with the possibilities for Jacksonville's development, Plant.

Became the general superintendent of the Adams Express Company for the territory of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. He successfully organized and extended express service in this region where transportation facilities were still deficient and uncoordinated despite rapid growth. At the approach of the Civil War the directors of Adams Express, fearing confiscation of their Southern properties, decided to transfer them to Plant.

With the Southern stockholders of the company, Plant founded the Southern Express Company in 1861 acting as president. His company acted as an agent for the Confederacy in collecting tariffs and transferring funds. In 1863, following a serious illness, he took an extended vacation in Europe and returned by way of Canada. Many railroads went bankrupt in the depression of 1873.

Convinced of the eventual economic revival of the South, Plant bought at foreclosure sales in 1879 and 1880 the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad and the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. With these as a nucleus he began building along the southern Atlantic seaboard a transportation system that twenty years later included fourteen railroad companies with 2100 miles of track, several steamship lines, and a number of important hotels. In 1882 he organized the.

Plant Investment Company, a holding company for the joint management of several small companies under his control. He reconstructed and extended several small railroads so as to provide continuous service across the state, and by providing better connections with through lines to the North, he gave Florida orange growers cheaper access to Northern markets.

Tampa, then a village of a few hundred inhabitants, he made the terminus of his southern Florida railroad and also the home port for a new line of steamships to Havana. Plant recognized that his railroad would be a greater success if combined with steamship and steamboat service. In 1886, the Plant Steamship Line was organized. The steamship line went to Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cuba, Boston, New Orleans, Jamaica, and Nova Scotia.