Читать книгу The Life of Henry Bradley Plant - G. Hutchinson Smyth - Страница 11

Table of Contents

The Plants Came from England to Branford, between Two Hundred and Three Hundred Years ago—Still Own the Lands First Acquired—Henry’s Father Died of Typhus Fever when Henry was about Six Years Old—His Tender Recollection of his Mother—Henry’s First Day at School—His Natural Diffidence—Mr. Plant’s After-Dinner Speeches—His Mother’s Second Marriage—Stepfather Kind to Henry—Thrown by a Plough Horse and nearly Killed—Attended School at Branford—Engaged on Steamboat Line Running between New Haven and New York—On Leaving, Promised a Captaincy—Marriage—Express Business—Leaves New Haven and Goes to New York—Romantic Experience in Florida.

THE Plants settled in Branford at an early date, and their descendants still own the lands on which their ancestors first settled over two hundred years ago. It will be seen, by referring to the genealogical table at the end of this volume, that Anderson Plant was of the fifth generation from John Plant, who resided in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1639. Anderson Plant was the father of Henry B. Plant, the subject of this biography. He is described as a farmer in good circumstances, of amiable disposition, fond of outdoor sports, gunning being a favorite amusement. He died when Henry was six years of age, and, consequently, Mr. Plant does not remember much about his father. 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. At another time, 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. His father died of typhus fever, and he himself also had the fever, and was so ill that he knew nothing of his loss until he was partially recovered from the dreadful disease.

One week after the father’s death, the father’s youngest sister died, and Henry’s sister also died a few days following, when she was about a year old. He was then left alone with his mother.

She was the only daughter of the Honorable Levi Bradley. He was a member of the Legislature and also a musician who taught a singing school. Mr. Plant remembers that his mother sat with the choir in front of the pulpit and led the singing in the Congregational Church. She had been brought up in the Episcopal Church, and though her father did not approve of it, she deemed it her duty to go with her husband to his church.

“One of the first recollections I have of my mother,” says Mr. Plant, “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.” This explains tears the author has seen in his eyes while listening to the orchestra in the music-room, but knew not then what were their tender and sacred association. Little did that mother realize the mighty power, the subduing influence, the enduring benediction to her child of that simple act, the outgoing of the maternal heart. The hallowed influence of that sacred hour has never been effaced through long years, in the whirl of business, in the varied conflicts incident to a public life, in close contact with civil war, within sound of the booming cannon, and the groans of the dying, away in far distant lands, and on stormy seas. Yet amid all, the hallowed influence of that sacred hour, when a mere child on a mother’s knee, has never been effaced. How well it accords with what the poet wrote:

“I had a mother once like you,

Who o’er my pillow hung,

Kissed from my cheek the briny dew,

And taught my infant tongue.

“She, when the nightly couch was spread,

Would bow my infant knee,

And place her hand upon my head,

And kneeling, pray for me.

“Youth came; the props of virtue ruled;

But oft at day’s decline,

A marble touch my brow could feel,

Dear mother was it thine?

“And still that hand so soft and fair,

Has kept its magic sway,

As when amid my curling hair

With gentle force it lay.

“That hallowed touch was ne’er forgot,

And now though time hath set

Stern manhood’s seal upon my brows,

These temples feel it yet.

“And if I e’er in Heaven appear,

A mother’s holy prayer,

A mother’s hand and gentle tear,

That pointed to a Saviour dear,

Will lead the wanderer there.”

Mr. Plant’s first day at school is another tender memory connected with his mother. 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 doubtless much more that her kindly mother-heart would suggest to awaken interest and stimulate ambition in the boy. 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. Thus began, more than seventy years ago, the first lesson of this most successful man. The scene is as vivid in his mind to-day as it was on the day when it was enacted. How little that teacher knew of the man that was enfolded in this timid child, and of the great privilege, as well as great responsibility, that was hers, thus early preparing him, in part, for his great career.

Henry was a very diffident child, nor did his diffidence quite cease with childhood, for even in manhood at public dinners when he suspected that he might be called on for a speech, it took away his appetite if not the enjoyment of the otherwise pleasant occasion.

This will surprise many of Mr. Plant’s friends who have listened to him with pleasure and profit on many occasions. He rarely prepared his speeches, but drew his ideas from that knowledge and experience which he possessed on so many different subjects, and always spoke intelligently in plain, clear, well-chosen words, without any attempt at oratorical display. Of this we shall speak in another place.

“Some time after my father’s death, perhaps three or four years,” says Mr. Plant, “my mother married again, a man by the name of Philemon Hoadley. He was a very religious man, and was exceedingly kind to me; he said I was the best boy he had ever seen. He lived in New York State, and mother left Branford and we moved to his home at Martensburg, New York. I lived part of the time with her there and part of the time with my grandmother Plant at Branford. She always attended church on the Sabbath, and took me with her, never failing to carry a good luncheon, which we ate in the church house at the close of the morning service.”

An incident of Mr. Plant’s boyhood was sent to the writer by one who has known him long, and esteems the President of the Southern Express Company, (of which he has been a faithful and efficient agent in North Carolina for many years) very highly, and loves him with a genuine, manly affection. He writes thus:

“The following incident which occurred in Branford during Mr. Plant’s boyhood may be of interest to you, in showing how near the country came to being deprived of his great usefulness and noble life. When a boy of about eight or ten years of age, 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.

“I wish I could express all I feel towards Mr. Plant. I have been in his employ thirty-eight years—with the Southern Express Company. During all these years he has been a friend to me in all that that word implies. I am sure I voice the sentiments of thousands of his employees when I say that he is one of the noblest and best of men.

A. P. B.”

After his mother married and had lived for some time at her husband’s home in New York State, they went to live at New Haven and Henry made his home with them, often visiting his grandmother Plant at Branford. The grandmother wanted him to go to Yale College, doubtless in the hope that he might enter the ministry, for few took a college course in those days unless they intended to enter the ministry. But Henry was not particularly fond of study. He had attended the district school at Branford, and had studied for a time at the Gillett Academy, and at Lowville, New York State. He had also studied under John E. Lovell, a famous teacher in New Haven, whose birthday was celebrated in New Haven, long after his death. He was the founder of the Lancastrian System of instruction in America. Henry did not accept his grandmother’s offer of a college course at Yale. He was anxious to try his hand at some active occupation. He attempted several things, none of which seemed to suit him. At last, in 1837, he engaged himself to a steamboat line running boats between New York and New Haven.

The boats of the line were named respectively, New York, New Haven, The Splendid, The Superior, and The Bunker Hill.

Henry began as captain’s boy and worked his way up, filling various positions for some five years, to the entire satisfaction of the company, so that on leaving it he was promised a captaincy of the next new boat if he would remain with the line. The following account, taken from, a recent issue of The Marine Journal, shows how young Plant would pocket his fastidiousness, and stand up to manly duty like a true American. This recalls the story of a man in a Philadelphia market who tendered his services to an Irish coachman, who was troubled to find a man to carry home some fish which he had bought for his master.

Arriving at the fine mansion on Chestnut Street the Irishman offered to pay his porter, who respectfully declined saying: “Oh, no, I only just carried the fish to oblige you. I do not need pay. I am a United States Senator. Good morning.”

“There are few men who can call to mind more interesting reminiscences of ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and tell them in a more agreeable manner than Henry B. Plant. Referring to his early manhood, Mr. Plant said recently: ‘I got my first experience in the express business when performing the service of a deckhand on a steamboat running between New Haven and New York in the latter part of the “thirties.” At the time referred to I was employed on the side-wheel steamer New York, which had for companion steamers the New Haven, Splendid, and Bunker Hill, on each one of which I served at one time or another. It was on the New York, however, that I spent the most of my apprenticeship. The deck-hands slept below in the forecastle, an uncomfortably small space in the “eyes” of the boat, and took our meals in the kitchen, standing up. Take it all in all it was rather rough on a fellow that had just left a good home, and when some of my towns-people would come aboard and catch me with swab or broom in hand I didn’t feel altogether happy, but had too much pluck to quit. One winter the New York had been laid up for new boilers, and I was transferred to the Splendid till the New York was ready for service, and when she came out in the spring it was quite an event. She had two new copper boilers, one on each guard, the first to be placed on the guards.

“‘Up to this time a considerable lot of package freight, express matter, began to be sent back and forth. This was stowed in different places about the boat and not properly cared for, until one day the captain conceived the idea that a big double stateroom forward of the wheel could be used in which to store it, and I was given the duty of looking after it, and a berth was put up there for me to sleep in. As I look back upon my career in those days, the one on which I was transferred from the dingy forecastle to the express room was by far the happiest, and it was there that I took my first lessons in the express business.’” Those who are familiar with the extensive business of the Southern Express Company, of which Mr. Plant was the founder, and which begins at Washington and extends throughout the railroads south of Washington and the Ohio, excepting the Illinois Central, and to Cuba by the Plant Steamship Lines, can understand why it has taken nearly a lifetime of earnest toil to get it up to its present magnitude. It is a monument to the enterprise of the youngster from Connecticut, who got his first idea of the express business on a steamer between New Haven and New York nearly sixty years ago. The other large undertakings of Mr. Plant in railroads, steamships, hotels, etc., that have helped make the State of Florida the garden spot of the United States in winter, were easy as their necessities developed, in comparison to the Southern Express business which was the foundation of this enterprising citizen’s fame and fortune.”

Captain Stone was very fond of young Plant, and deeply regretted his loss to the service. It was during Mr. Plant’s engagement with this company, in 1842, that he married Miss Ellen Elizabeth Blackstone, daughter of Hon. James Blackstone, one of the Blackstone family already referred to in this biography. One son was born to him, a promising child, who lived only eighteen months. His second and only living child is his son, Morton Freeman, now associated with his father as his assistant, and Vice-President of all the interests of the “Plant System,” over which his father presides. Mr. Plant’s position on the steamboat line plying between New York and New Haven, entailed a frequent absence from his home in New Haven, and he therefore decided to be more at home. At this time he went into the express business of the line conducted by Beecher and Company. At first he had charge of the business at New Haven, but afterwards went to New York City, still keeping up his connection with the boats. When the Beecher Company was consolidated with the Hartford and New Haven line, owned by Daniel Philipps and C. Spooner of Hartford, Mr. Plant was placed in charge of all the express business of the New Haven line in New York. Subsequently the business was acquired by the Adams Express Company, and was transferred from the steamboat line to the railroad, and Mr. Plant was transferred with it. While thus employed, young Plant was economical and saving. He received his pay monthly, and instead of wasting it in folly and dissipation he gave his earnings to his mother, and she banked it for him. He then bought some stock in a New Haven bank which he still retains. His stepfather, being a religious man, advised Henry to buy a pew in a new church which the Congregational Society was building at New Haven. This he did, and in after years, on the failure of the church, when the property was sold, he got back his money. His stepfather died at New Haven about 1862 or 1863.

It was in 1853 that Mrs. Plant was seized with congestion of the lungs, and Doctors Delafield and Marco advised that she be at once taken to Florida. On March 25, 1853, Mr. Plant started with his sick wife from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, by the steamer Marion. From Charleston he sailed on the steamer Calhoun to Savannah, Georgia. And from Savannah he went by the steamer Welaka to Jacksonville, Florida. It took over eight days to

Ellen Elizabeth (Blackstone) Plant.

make the journey which is now a delightful trip of one day, for he left New York on the Sabbath morning and the next Sabbath evening he arrived at Jacksonville, which was a small village then with only one poor wharf and not a vehicle of any kind to carry passengers or baggage. He succeeded in getting some negro boys to carry his trunk to a poor hotel where he remained only one day. Through some persuasion he found a man to take him into his private house at Strawberry Mills, seven miles in the country from Jacksonville, across the St. John’s River. Here Mrs. Plant’s health greatly improved, her cough disappeared and she was so much better that by the first of May, Mr. Plant was able to leave her and return to New York. Early in July, Mrs. Plant came back to the city apparently in good health. The following almost romantic story is told in the New York Times of their first experience in Florida.

“In the winter of 1853, a Northern man with an invalid wife brought her down to Jacksonville to benefit her health. The present metropolis of Florida was then a settlement of five or six houses, one of which was called a hotel, but the hotel was so badly kept that the gentleman was cautioned against going to it, and he found accommodations in a private house. He had letters of introduction to a Florida settler, whose home was six or eight miles out of Jacksonville, and as soon as he could communicate with him through a stray traveller, the settler sent his boat after the Northerner and took him to his house. The boat was an immense ‘dug-out,’ made from a single mammoth log, manned by a crew of uniformed blacks, who handled their oars in man-of-war style. At this settler’s house a hospitable and comfortable stopping-place was found.

“In the course of the winter the lady’s health improved to such an extent that her husband decided upon taking her to St. Augustine for a pleasure trip. There was in the household a beautiful Indian girl, the daughter of one of the Seminole chiefs, who afterward became the wife of the settler I have mentioned, and she volunteered to accompany the lady on what was then the long and difficult journey. The only road between Jacksonville and St. Augustine was the old Spanish highway known as ‘the king’s highroad,’ and this was so grown up with trees and bushes that it was barely passable. But even this road lay five or six miles from the settler’s house, and to reach it it was necessary to drive through the trackless woods. The gentleman and his wife and the Indian girl set out in a buggy, their host going before them on horseback to select the road and blaze the trees between his place and the king’s highway, to enable the strangers to find their way back.

“The journey was made in safety; but the return trip took a little longer than was intended, and the party found themselves at the point where they must leave the old highway and turn into the forest just as the deep shades of a Florida night were about to fall. They found the blazed trees, but were unable to follow them. The gentleman, however, managed for some time to pick his way by finding the indistinct wheel tracks in the sand and the broken twigs; but as the darkness increased this became impracticable, and there was every prospect that the invalid lady and her husband and the Indian girl would be compelled to spend the night under the pine trees. But their host was better acquainted with blazed trees, and, as they did not arrive when expected, he set out on horseback to hunt them up, and his shouts soon gave them welcome assurance of succor. The lady’s health was so much improved before the winter ended that she returned home comparatively well, and during the remainder of her life every winter was passed in Florida. Her husband has not since that time missed his annual winter trip to Florida, and he is now spending his thirty-ninth winter in the State.

“The gentleman who found Jacksonville a settlement of a few shanties, and who came so near passing a romantic but uncomfortable night in the woods with his wife and the Seminole girl, told me the story of his adventure a few days ago, while I sat with him in his gorgeous private car, so far down in the State of Florida that, in 1853, few white men had reached it. The Florida climate never did a better winter’s work than when it restored the health of this gentleman’s wife, and thus interested him in the new country, for the gentleman was Mr. H. B. Plant, who no longer does his Florida travelling in a dug-out, but sends his own cars over his own tracks to the farthermost corners of the State.”