The Southern Express Company rendered very valuable services to the men engaged on both sides during the Civil War, by carrying packages, boxes, and parcels of all descriptions free of charge,--medicines, and comforts of various character, that made the hard life of the soldier a little easier, and gladdened his heart with the evidences that he was remembered tenderly in his far-away home. This service was especially acceptable on the occasions of exchange of prisoners, when clothing and money were the special needs of the men. The benediction of many a brave heart, now still in death, rests upon the kindly services of the Southern Express Company so generously given during the four years of the bloody struggle. In evidence of Mr. Plant’s popularity and the esteem in which he was held by his associates in business as early as 1861, it may be mentioned that on January 1st of that year, at Augusta, Ga., he was made the recipient of a magnificent testimonial in the form of a service of solid silver bearing the following inscription: PRESENTED TO H. B. PLANT BY HIS ASSOCIATES IN THE ADAMS SOUTHERN EXPRESS AS A TESTIMONIAL OF THEIR RESPECT AND ESTEEM AUGUSTA, GA., JANUARY 1, 1861 In 1873, eleven years after the death of his first wife, Mr. Plant married Miss Margaret Josephine Loughman, the only daughter of Martin Loughman, of New York City. She is descended from an ancient and noble family, whose ancestral estate, eight miles long, in the Land of the Shamrock, is now occupied by Lord Dundrum. Mrs. Plant’s great grandmother on her mother’s side was Lady Mary Murphy, of Ballymore Castle, Ballymore. Her own mother was Miss Ellen O’Duyer, said to have been a woman of great beauty and to have been descended from the Kings of Munster. The finest train of Pullman palace cars we ever saw was prominent among the beautiful exhibits at the Atlanta Exposition of last year (1896). Their exquisite upholstering and decoration owed their superlative finish to the refined taste of Mrs. Plant. The Tampa Bay Hotel, more like a palace of art, is indebted to this same lady for much of its elaborate furnishing and artistic adornment. The two hand-carved mantelpieces in the salon, the admiration of all visitors, as well as some of the fine cabinet-work in the gentlemen’s reading-room, evinced her business capacity and fine sense of the fitness of beautiful furnishing that costs no more than the plain and commonplace. She has given much time and earnest effort to the selection, purchase, and direction of the upholstering and decorations of that finest of American-built steamships, _La Grande Duchesse_, just completed at Newport News.