The Mystic River Historical Society is offering a lecture by Jim Streeter, Groton’s Town Historian about Morton F. Plant. An almost larger-than-life character, Morton Plant’s life (1852-1918) reads like a novel. Born to a father who grew wealthy with the “opening up of Florida,” Plant was an industrialist, running steamship and railroad companies, owning hotels and buying and selling real estate in New York City and Florida.
Also quite generous with the money he earned, Plant gave a large endowment to ensure the success of New London’s Connecticut College for Women in 1911 for which he was chairman of the founding board. His summer cottage, the 31-room Branford House at Groton’s Eastern Point Beach, is now the 70 acre property of the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus.
A well-known sportsman, Morton Plant was involved in many aspects of yachting, from design to racing, and he even owned a baseball team in New London. In his private life, scandal arose from Plant’s 1914 courtship and marriage to his second wife, Mae Caldwell Manwaring, a recent divorcee 30 years his junior.
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Author Jim Streeter is a Groton native, and the Town’s Historian, a Town Councilor and past Mayor of the Town of Groton, and also an active founder of the Groton Historical Society. A graduate of the University of New Haven’s Criminal Justice & Industrial Relations program, Streeter is a former police officer and retired Forensic Evidence Examiner for the Connecticut State Police. He has spent 34 years appointed or elected in public service.
