The Historic Haile Homestead at Kanapaha Plantation, one of the oldest houses in Alachua County, was the home of Thomas Evans Haile, his wife Esther Serena Chesnut Haile, and 14 of their children. The Hailes came from Camden, South Carolina, in 1854 to establish a 1,500-acre Sea Island cotton plantation named Kanapaha. Enslaved black craftsmen completed the 6,200-square-foot house in 1856, and the 1860 census recorded 66 slaves living there. After surviving bankruptcy in 1868, the family turned the property into a productive farm that grew a variety of fruits and vegetables, including oranges. Serena Haile died in 1895 and Thomas in 1896. The homestead passed to their son Evans, a prominent defense attorney, and became the site of house parties attended by some of Gainesville’s most distinguished citizens. The family also had the unusual habit of writing on the walls, leaving more than 12,500 words, with the oldest dating to the 1850s. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and restored in 1996, the homestead, still partly owned by Evans Haile’s descendants, is one of the few remaining homesteads built by Sea Island cotton planters in this part of Florida.