Henry B. Plant - Early Life

Early Life

Henry Bradley Plant was founder of the Plant System of railroads and steamboats. He was born in Branford, Conn., the son of Betsey (Bradley) and Anderson Plant, a farmer in good circumstances. He was the descendant of John Plant who probably emigrated from England and settled at Hartford, Conn., about 1639. When the boy was six, his father died. Several years later his mother married again and took him to live first at Martinsburg, N.Y., and later at New Haven, Conn., where he attended a private school. His grandmother, who hoped to make a clergyman of him, offered him an education at Yale College, but, impatient to begin an active career, he got a job as captain's boy, deck hand, and man-of-all-work on a steamboat plying between New Haven and Hartford.