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Overview
In this landmark biography, Canter Brown Jr. makes evident the extent of Henry Bradley Plant’s influences throughout North, Central, and South America as well as his role in the emergence of integrated transportation and a national tourism system. One of the preeminent historians of Florida, Brown brings this important but understudied figure in American history to the foreground.
Henry Bradley Plant: Gilded Age Dreams for Florida and a New South carefully examines the complicated years of adventure and activity that marked Plant’s existence, from his birth in Connecticut in 1819 to his somewhat mysterious death in New York City in 1899. Brown illuminates Plant’s vision and perspectives for the state of Florida and the country as a whole and traces many of his influences back to events from his childhood and early adulthood. The book also elaborates on Plant’s controversial Civil War relationships and his utilization of wartime earnings in the postwar era to invest in the bankrupt Southern rail lines. With the success of his businesses such as the Southern Express Company and the Tampa Bay Hotel, Plant transformed Florida into a hub for trade and tourism—traits we still recognize in the Florida of today.
This thoroughly researched biography fills important gaps in Florida’s social and economic history and sheds light on a historical figure to an extent never previously undertaken or sufficiently appreciated. Both informative and innovative, Brown’s volume will be a valuable resource for scholars and general readers interested in Southern history, business history, Civil War–era history, and transportation history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817392666 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 11/26/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 424 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Formative Years
1819 to 1834
"a liquid fire never to be quenched"
"I don't know much about Mr. H. B. Plant's religion or politics," humorist Charles Henry Smith —"Bill Arp" to readers — observed in 1896, "but I do know that he is a grand old gentleman of the olden time." Smith knew his subject well. Plant's perspectives, values, and judgment had been formed in the 1820s and 1830s when circumstances reflected little of the advanced industrial age that later propelled him to personal fame and immense wealth. Rather, the world for him then encompassed the badly misnamed "Era of Good Feelings" that followed the War of 1812 and its tumultuous successor the Jacksonian Age. To the child, titans of industry and captains of political parties offered few, if any, models for behavior. Instead, he sought worthy examples in cautionary tales born of youthful experiences and embellished stories of Revolutionary forebears. He lived in what he could truly call a home only sporadically. Still, he drew strength from family, friendship, religion, and heritage. As an all-too-human being, his mistakes created lasting pain for himself and others. He survived and prospered, though, by keenly observing his actions and surroundings and finding courage to follow truer paths forward. "I have taken note of him for nearly half a century, and if there is any bigger man in the line of public progress and public benefaction I don't know it," Smith commented. "Many other men have built on the foundations that others have laid and become notable on the wrecks of other people's fortunes, but Mr. Plant made his own plans in early life and has by slow and sure degrees expanded and matured them."
Plant's life began in a moment infused with fear, which is to say a time when alarm bordering on panic prevailed. His parents, Anderson Plant and Betsey Bradley Plant of Branford, Connecticut, had married on December 23, 1818. Anderson was twenty-two, and Betsey had just turned nineteen. The young couple quickly conceived their first child, but as the pregnancy evolved during 1819, distant reports increasingly stoked local concerns. Historic Branford lay on Long Island Sound less than eight miles east of New Haven and was thus tied to the sea and maritime commerce. As it happened, waves of "pestilential disorders" plagued the Atlantic seaboard that spring and summer. Yellow fever especially brought deadly consequences, striking from Boston to Savannah. Thirty-seven died in New York City despite a rigid quarantine. New Haven, in turn, blockaded against New York. On October 5 a local newspaper cautioned, "The citizens of New-Haven will have abundant cause for gratitude, if they escape the pestilence." They did not, and several cases appeared. This would not be the last occasion when disease threatened Henry Plant's survival.
On October 27, with the fever persisting in its deadly course, Betsey gave birth to Henry Bradley Plant. Despite the perilous circumstances, he proved a healthy child, one fortunate enough to enter a usually stable world. Branford offered a locale where family and relations, even though not affluent, enjoyed respect and extensive networks of interconnections. Not that all the Plants lived in humble circumstances. Anderson's cousin David Plant served when Henry was born as speaker of the state house of representatives and, by 1827, sat in the US Congress. Still, David's example offered the exception rather than the family rule. "Mr. Plant was poor when young, his father being a worthy farmer of Branford," a local editor later observed. Anderson farmed land Plants had held since the seventeenth century. It lay "in a fertile little valley, a mile from the village, and [was] bounded on the west by the Branford Hills." Nearby in "Plantsville," Henry's grandparents Samuel and Sarah Frisbie Plant raised Anderson's younger siblings. Their son Samuel Orrin Plant, born four years before Henry and technically his uncle, came closest to being the older brother that Henry never had. They bonded as friends and, in time, married sisters.
Beyond immediate family circles, Branford's Congregational Church offered focus for Henry's earliest years. Townspeople assembled at its sanctuary located strategically on the town green to find social as well as religious nourishment. Henry recalled that as a child, he sat "in the high galleries in the old church where the seats were arranged in slips, the boys on one side, and the girls on the other. Neither could see the minister, and it is very doubtful whether any of them heard him." Plant added: "There were no children's sermons in those days. The Babes, of whom Paul writes, were not fed on milk, but on strong meat, which even the rigid doctrinal appetites of the fathers sometimes found hard to digest."
As with extended families, the Plants likely kept a "Sabbath-Day House" in a spot abutting the green. Such structures served as a center for activity on "the Lord's day" when congregants were not required in church. Religious leaders urged that available time be utilized for Bible reading or introspection, but the advice often went unheeded. "Possibly some one of less serious mood might talk with his neighbor of worldly matters, or the news of the day," one clergyman observed critically. Little wonder that many sought respite from faith's rigors. Congregationalists had moved past some "obnoxious" customs by the 1820s, but the times brought new and, in some respects, more frightful demands. No longer did members publicly confess "in detail, all of the[ir] particularly scandalous sins." Yet church fathers viewed the times as "dark ones from the standpoint of morality" and sanctioned a "committee of inspection and information" to investigate even wispy rumors of scandal. Church trials through the decade involved "drunkeness, theft, lasciviousness and adultery." In 1826, as Henry turned seven, congregation members felt themselves falling into ever-more-desperate straits. "The state of this church is such as imperiously to require discipline," they determined. A "new, and larger committee" resulted.
Branford's Congregationalists might have suffered greater extremes of intolerance and poor judgment but for the steady, if hardfisted, hand of Pastor Timothy Phelps Gillett. "Blessed is the church which, in the days of stress and cleansing, has the gift of such a pastor," a church historian proclaimed. "Many another congregation was forever divided with hatred and schism in these same hard years, and we gladly ascribe to this shepherd's sanity and calm, forbearing judgment the praise for preserving his people in unity and concord." He added, "He was the last of those old New England pastors whose word was a law in the community and whose voice bore the authority of God." The historian conceded nonetheless, "The ministry of 'Father' Gillett was not spectacular, and will not measure up in dramatic incidents to that of his predecessors." The pastor baptized Henry on June 9, 1822. As Gillett also taught the local school, he instructed young Plant "for several terms." Biographer George Hutchinson Smyth reported Henry's memories: "[Gillett] was a sober, solemn, orthodox clergyman of the old school, scholarly and dignified both in and out of the pulpit. It is only a hint of the changes that time brings, and no reflection on this good man's charity to say that, had he seen one of the modern ministers visiting his flock on a bicycle, he would have had him deposed from the sacred office."
While Father Gillett exercised significant influence on young Henry, the weight of his father's presence necessarily loomed even greater. Unfortunately for the child, Anderson Plant died young. Henry's mental images of him dimmed over time to two specific visions. "He can recall how his father once came in, with a friend, from a morning's duck shooting, and threw down half a dozen ducks on the floor," Smyth noted. "At anothertime, his father took him by the hand to see something that was happening in the town which had drawn out the people, but he does not remember what it was." That latter recollection surely concerned Branford's grandest day of the era. On August 21, 1824, Revolutionary hero the Marquis de Lafayette reached Branford while touring the United States. "He stopped but a short time, but long enough to receive and return the congratulations of many of the inhabitants," an account described. "The children far and near got a furlough for the forenoon — the afternoon is always unencumbered on that day — and they came pouring over the hill and valley for many a mile around, led on by their parents and grand-parents, their dames & patriarchs of the villages and hamlets." It added, "A crowd of people and two companies of foot [i.e., militia] awaited him at Branford, and they joined in loud acclamations at his approach." The dramatic nature of the day notwithstanding, Betsey Plant remained at home. Her responsibility lay in tending to her new daughter, Eliza Ann. Henry's baby sister had been born exactly three months earlier.
While Henry's memories of his father faded with time, other ties forged in childhood endured with continuing impact. His relationships with his mother and grandparents proved crucial and will be examined shortly. Friendships supplemented those ties. No list of Plant's childhood friends has survived, but the identities of several key individuals are known. Samuel O. Plant, as noted, stood among them. Also close by were the Blackstone boys, sons of community leader James Blackstone. In politics a Federalist and later a Whig, Blackstone held numerous public offices. "He was a man of character and remarkable ability," a biographer observed, "and if his tastes had led him to a larger place for the exercise of his ability no field would have been so large that he would not have been a leader among men." Henry admired Blackstone, especially after Anderson Plant's death, while sharing friendship with his sons George, Lorenzo, John, and Timothy. Lorenzo, born four months before Henry, always ranked first. The Blackstone girls, too, factored heavily. Sam Plant in time married the eldest, Mary. That union left Ellen available for Henry.
While the Plant boys eventually found love at the Blackstone home, they also gained considerably from Captain Asa Norton, who reigned at Branford as a larger-than-life figure. Admittedly, Norton meant more to Lorenzo — who married his daughter — than to Henry, but both boys grew enthralled. Unlike the farm-bound Plants and Blackstones, the captain looked to the sea for fortune and adventure. Best known as master of a packet line that ran from Branford to New York, he also helped tie New Haven businessmen to West Indian resources and markets. Norton's tropical tales intrigued Henry and Lorenzo on countless occasions, broadened their horizons, and in Henry's case, fixed his gaze toward the Antilles. Norton and his wife, Sophia Barker Norton, produced eight children. One son died in June 1826 at the outset of that year's sickly season, but other family members shared childhoods and adult friendships with Henry and Lorenzo. Daughter Emily, born in July 1820, eventually captured Lorenzo's heart.
With family and friends available to enrich his days, Henry spent his first six years in relative stability and comfort. Farm work required exertion, a fact inherent in the family's circumstances. "His boyhood was spent principally on the farm assisting in matters which pertained to that type of life, which undoubtedly had an important bearing on his practical knowledge, as well as a beneficial influence on his health," future associate Franklin Q. Brown relayed. "The life of a New England boy in those days was not one of idleness in any sense." A solid work ethic originating in those tender years characterized the man as well as the boy. So, too, did a yearning for life and, especially, music. Betsey Plant's father, Levi Bradley, a community leader and sometimes a legislator, had taught a singing school and delighted in performing. Betsey, perhaps aided by her Episcopalian — rather than Congregationalist — heritage, took special pleasure of her own in music. She led the Congregational choir and filled the Plant home as well with mellifluous airs. "One of the first recollections I have of my mother," Henry recalled, "was on a Christmas Eve, when she dressed me up neatly, took me on her knees, talked affectionately to me, and sang that beautiful vesper hymn, 'Adeste Fideles'; even now, whenever I hear it, it brings tears to my eyes." Brown observed, "Mr. Plant always felt he had inherited a certain taste for music, particularly sacred, from his mother."
Plant neglected to date the "Adeste Fideles" performance, but it probably came in December 1825. A mother's warmth and a beautiful Christmas carol then would have addressed a distraught six-year-old child's urgent need for comfort and reassurance as he faced a world that had tragically and abruptly turned upside down. Deadly fevers again beset Branford during summer and fall 1825. "It is well known," a New York newspaper had observed that June, "that in the warm season, agues and fevers, dysentery and typhus fever, frequently prevail." Rather than yellow fever, the problem now involved typhus syncopalis, or New England Spotted Fever. Today associated with meningitis and encephalitis, the typhus often proved deadly. "The disease had two notable elements," a researcher explained. "The first was described as 'an alarming or fatal sinking' or 'paroxysms of subsidentia' described by patients as a sensation of 'gastric sinking.' The second outstanding characteristic was the lack of response to, and indeed the danger of, the usual purging remedies usually employed in the treatment of fever." Headaches, vertigo, dizziness, and extreme exhaustion characterized early symptoms. Redness of the skin and "eruptions of all kinds" followed. "The patient often looked as if he or she was affected by poisoning or narcotics as well as stroke," the researcher advised. In cases involving the disease's "insidious form," a week or two of agony often preceded death.
Typhus struck several Connecticut towns during the 1825 fever season, but Branford and the Plant household bore especially heavy losses. Postmaster Jonathan Barker became the first local casualty on August 12. Joel Ives succumbed two days later. Plant family relation Hannah Frisbie Hoadley, wife of farmer and blacksmith Orrin Hoadley, passed away after much torment on September 24. Henry's seventeen-year-old aunt, Mary R. Plant, followed on October 1. Soon, the pestilence invaded the Anderson Plant home. He fell ill, as did Henry and infant Eliza Ann. Anderson perished on October 29, aged only thirty. Eliza Ann lived a week or so longer. That Henry survived appeared miraculous. "[He] was so ill that he knew nothing of his loss," biographer Smyth explained, "until he was partially recovered from the dreadful disease."
Betsey Plant strove as best she could to move beyond the tragedies, finding purpose in tending to her son's welfare. "[He] was brought up by his mother," Frank Brown commented, "to whom he was always devoted." Diminutive in size, she stood five feet, one inch tall but proved "a lady of strong personality." To help her surviving child cope with tragic loss, she enrolled him in Pastor Gillett's school, an event that Plant recollected vividly. Smyth preserved the memories, which probably arose in January 1826. "She had dressed him up in new clothes and talked to him about going to school and learning to read, and becoming a good scholar, and doubtlessly much more that her kindly mother-heart would suggest to awaken interest and stimulate ambition in the boy," he related. "Then she took him outside the gate, pointed out the schoolhouse, kissed him, and told him to go thither and give his name to the teacher as a scholar. His mother intuitively knew her child's sensitive disposition, and had her misgivings about his being able to carry out her instructions; so she concealed herself and watched him till he reached the school door. Here poor little Henry's courage failed him, and he came running back to his mother, not to be scolded but to be encouraged and helped over his childish timidity. His mother this time went with him to the schoolhouse, took him in, and made him acquainted with the lady teacher [an assistant to or substitute for Gillett]."
Betsey quickly discovered that her need to keep the farm going infringed on her ability to keep Henry in school. While Anderson had not died a pauper, the means he passed on to his widow and son were modest. When estate distribution came in May 1827, she received personal possessions valued at less than $200. As Anderson's only surviving child, Henry inherited notes, cash, and personal property amounting in all to $383.59. The circumstances compelled mother and son to labor in order to make ends meet. That fact nearly led to Henry's demise. Alden Pardee Bryan, a Branford native and Plant protégé, related the tale: "When a boy of about eight or ten years of age [actually six or seven], he was one day riding a plow horse at work in the field. The horse became frightened and ran away, carrying plow, boy, and all with him. Barefooted and bareheaded, the brave lad clung to the horse until entirely exhausted, when he fell and was severely injured. He was found in the woods by friends who carried him into their house. After several hours' hard work by the doctor and others, he revived sufficiently to be taken to his home. The fight for life was severe and protracted, but he bore it heroically."
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Formative Years: 1819 to 1834
2. New Haven: 1834 to 1844
3. Recovery: 1844 to 1854
4. Southern Ways: 1854 to 1859
5. Unwanted Conflict: 1859 to 1863
6. A Work of Reconstruction: 1863 to 1868
7. Flush Times: 1868 to 1873
8. The Panic: 1873 to 1878
9. Florida and the Pearl of the Antilles: 1878 to 1882
10. Tampa: 1882 to 1886
11. Transportation and Tourism: 1886 to 1889
12. Unanticipated Outcomes: 1889 to 1893
13. In the Midst of Calamity: 1893 to 1896
14. War and Peace: 1896 to 1899
Afterword: The Ephemeral Nature of Legacies
Notes
Bibliography
Index