Most citizens of Plant City don’t realize that our town bears the name not of a crop, but that of a man, Henry B Plant. With the notoriety of our strawberry industry, and the long heritage in agriculture across several fronts, it is somewhat natural that people would assume our city’s moniker had something to do with crops rather than a man. But that assumption misses out on knowing of a pioneering gentleman whose influence and accomplishment dwarfed little ol’ Plant City.
There is an old rumor that, how while Mr. Plant did not officially object to our town bearing his name when one of his railroad lines came through, he never stayed a night here. You see, at that time the old wood burning railroad steamers of the day required watering stops every 7-10 miles or so and, compared to his long heritage in many major cities, Plant City to him was likely a muddy watering hole. The rumor was that in his later years if/when his private rail car would be passing through our town, he would pull down the shade.
Putting aside for the moment how our town was perhaps not noteworthy enough to merit his name in 1885 when he was 66 years of age, we would be doubly remiss if we entirely forget who Henry B. Plant was and his many accomplishments. While writing of his life could and does fill biography books, which I’ve enjoyed and recommend, allow me to provide some high-altitude summary points for our readers to ponder and hopefully pass on to their children and grandchildren who all too often don’t learn of such things anymore.
Henry Bradley Plant was born in 1819 and lived a full life to age 79, dying in 1899. For perspective, at the time of his death New York City was mostly three stories or less with a few 10 story buildings and most Americans still did not have indoor plumbing or electricity. Young Plant was only six when his father died. While his mother wanted him to be a Christian Minister and educated him well, he instead passed on a ticket to Yale and took his first job at 18 on a steamship in the waters of NY and CT. Here he saw what was the shipboard part of the “Express Business.” Imagine the days before Amazon delivery, cell phones, telephones, internet, automobiles, and most anything moving faster than a galloping horse. Now imagine wanting to send a package and a note to a friend residing 50 miles inland up the Potomac River from Washington DC. Delivering such a parcel was what the express business entailed. In its infancy it involved cooperation between railroads, ships, horse wagons, and delivery boys. Henry Plant worked in this world beginning at the very bottom and eventually rising to build an empire and lead a fully integrated network of all aspects.
It was 25 years into his rise in the world of the Express Business with his gaining knowledge of the railroad aspects of it, mostly in Georgia and/or North Florida due in part to his wife’s health requirements to avoid the northern winters, when Mr. Plant’s wife Ellen died and the American Civil war began. He sent his son to be with family up north, and since he was already trusted by his northern employers and investors, and also by those of the Confederacy, Mr. Plant successfully purchased portions of the Adams Express Company that now found themselves residing south of the Mason Dixon line. It is interesting to note here, though he was shrewd and hard, he paid a fair price. He did not steal it, he bought it, and this is important and revealing as to the character of the man. Henry Plant believed business could be hard, but that it should not be criminal. As a young man, Henry worked for a steamship line that committed crimes to win against competition, but he preferred to beat the competition with value, not sins against it. During the depression in the South that followed the end of the Civil War many of his former partners remained his friends and later aided him in the expansion of his empire.
After the Civil War, Henry Plant spent the last 24 years of his life building and/or rebuilding in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and beyond. While some here recall Mr. Plant’s railroad interests in our town due to how the east/west freight and passenger rail lines he built between Tampa and Sanford in 1884 are still in service. Amazingly, he built 74 miles of railroad track in six months. Yet, sadly, not only have many here forgotten the man who gave us one rail line through our town, but few give him credit for what he built in and did for Tampa. After being spurned by Cedar Key where Henry first wanted to make a Gulf Port, Mr. Plant chose Tampa instead.
In addition to giving rail service across the middle of Florida, Plant wanted to establish steamship service between Tampa, Cuba, and the Bahamas. So, he dredged the 26-mile Tampa channel from 9 to 25 feet, built two earthen piers with rail each extending a mile into the bay, and commissioned a state of the art steamship, The Mascotte. She was a 200ft record breaker whose name is still on Tampa’s City Seal, but her draft was 12 feet and Plant envisioned a Tourist Cruise operation whereby passengers could board a train in New York, arrive in Tampa, stay in a luxurious hotel he was building there, and board a ship to ply the gentle Gulf waters to visit Cuba, the Bahamas, and beyond. Those two foreign port cities had shallow channels as well, but no problem for Plant; he deepened the channel of Havana Cuba and Nassau Bahamas and set Mascotte and her successor, Olivette, to pioneer a cruise ship vacation industry from the west coast of Florida.
In 1896, there loomed an embargo against Cuba that was to further lead the country towards war with the Spanish in 1898. Such would have totally strangled the tobacco trade in Ybor City. With short prior knowledge, Vincente Ybor of Tampa hired Plant to send the Mascotte and Olivette for a huge order of leaf tobacco. The ships beat the embargo deadline and delivered tremendous cargoes of tobacco and thus Plant helped to save the Tampa-based cigar industry. And when the Spanish American War did come, due to Mr. Plant’s improvements Tampa was chosen as superior to Miami as the port to accommodate the military efforts.
By the time of his death, The Plant System entailed nearly 2,000 miles of railroad track in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, coupled with steamship service to Tampa, St. Petersburg, Palatka, Sanford, Port Manatee, Punta Gorda, Ft. Myers, Key West, Jacksonville, Savanah, Havana, Mobile, Boston, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Charlottetown, NY, and more. It is easy then to believe that indeed perhaps our town was but a small dot compared to the mosaic of his influence and work product.
There is so much more that Mr. Henry Plant accomplished such that it would be easy to think him an unromantic soul; easy but wrong. He was a faithful husband, a dutiful father, an avid fisherman, a lover of man and machine, and a gentleman. He was genuinely mourned by all who knew him when he died in 1899.