David Plant

David Plant (March 29, 1783 – October 18, 1851) was a United States Representative from Connecticut and a prominent state legislator and executive officer during the early nineteenth century. He was born in Stratford, Fairfield County, Connecticut, where he spent much of his life and professional career. Raised in a period when Connecticut was transitioning from its colonial charter to a more modern constitutional framework, Plant came of age in a community shaped by both Congregational and emerging Episcopal influences, and he would later be associated with the state’s educated professional and political class.

Plant pursued his early education at the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire, Connecticut, an institution that later became known as Cheshire Academy and was recognized for preparing young men for college and the professions. He then attended Yale College, one of the principal training grounds for New England’s legal and political elite, graduating in 1804. Immediately after his graduation from Yale, he studied law at the Litchfield Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut, the first formal law school in the United States and a leading center for legal education in the early republic. He was admitted to the bar in 1804, the same year he completed his legal studies, and soon commenced the practice of law in his native Stratford.

As a young attorney, Plant established himself in Stratford’s legal community and broadened his public responsibilities by entering judicial service. He became a judge of the probate court of Fairfield County, overseeing matters related to estates, wills, guardianships, and other probate issues. His work in the probate court placed him at the intersection of local legal practice and the administration of family and property law, and it helped to build the reputation that would support his subsequent political career. His legal and judicial experience, combined with his Yale and Litchfield training, aligned him with the professional class that increasingly dominated Connecticut’s public life in the early nineteenth century.

Plant’s formal political career began in the Connecticut House of Representatives, where he served as a member from 1817 to 1820. During this period, Connecticut was adjusting to its new state constitution of 1818, which replaced the colonial charter and redefined the structure of state government. In this context of institutional change, Plant rose quickly in influence. He served as the first speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives under the new constitutional order in 1819 and again in 1820, presiding over the lower chamber and helping to guide legislative business during a formative period for the state’s reconstituted government.

After his service in the House, Plant advanced to the upper chamber of the state legislature, serving as a Connecticut state senator in 1821 and 1822. His tenure in the Senate further solidified his standing as a leading figure in state politics. In 1823 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, a position he held through successive terms until 1827. As lieutenant governor, he served as the second-highest executive officer of the state and presiding officer of the Connecticut Senate, participating in the administration of state affairs during a time when national political alignments were shifting from the era of the Democratic-Republicans to the emerging Second Party System.

In 1827, Plant’s political career reached the national level when he was elected as an anti-Jacksonian Member of the U.S. House of Representatives to the Twentieth Congress, representing Connecticut at a time when the country was deeply divided over the policies and leadership of President Andrew Jackson. The Twentieth Congress met from March 4, 1827, to March 3, 1829, and Plant aligned himself with the Adams and anti-Jacksonian forces that would soon coalesce into the National Republican and later Whig parties. Though identified as an Adams man, he did not seek re-election in 1828. In that year’s political realignment, he nevertheless received a small number of votes as a Jacksonian candidate, as he had in the 1825 and 1826 gubernatorial elections, reflecting the fluid and sometimes overlapping partisan labels of the period.

Following the conclusion of his term in Congress, Plant returned to Connecticut and resumed the practice of law in Stratford. He withdrew from national office but remained a respected figure in his community, his career having encompassed legislative leadership, executive office, and judicial responsibilities at the state level, as well as service in the federal legislature. He continued to live in Stratford until his death on October 18, 1851. David Plant was buried in the Congregational Burying Ground in Stratford, underscoring his enduring ties to the town where he was born, practiced law, and spent the greater part of his public and private life.