Florida Historical Markers Programs - Marker Detail

Description: Side One: In 1853, planters Daniel Scott and Daniel Finley of Fairfield, South Carolina, bought 2,664 acres of land here for $6,743, and in 1854 Scott was taxed on 1,400 acres and 30 enslaved people. In 1855, Scott and Finley purchased 54 people for $28,000 from George Leitner in South Carolina. Every person's name, except infants, was listed on the deed. In 1858, Scott bought out Finley, and by 1860 Scott and his children James (35), George (20), Maxey (8) and Emma (6) lived in the house that stood on this site. Enslaved carpenters built the two-story, center hall, timber-framed house with yellow pine. The studs were marked with incised Roman numerals and fastened with mortise and tenon joints. Enslaved masons built the chimney with bricks made on site. W. R. Craig (35), a master carpenter lived with Scott's son William (22), his wife Mary (21) on 125 acres east of the Scott property. In 1860, Daniel Scott owned 2,690 acres valued at $14,000, and 66 enslaved people with a value of $31,500. The 1860 Slave Schedule indicated that 61 people lived in 12 one-room cabins. That same year the plantation produced 26,000 pounds of Sea Island cotton, 1,700 bushels of peas, corn, and sweet potatoes and 10 tons of hay. Side Two: Scott's sons James and George died during the Civil War, but William (Company B, 2nd FL Infantry) survived despite being shot in the neck and back and captured at Gettysburg. Daniel Scott sold his land in 1866 to E.L. King and moved to Jefferson County with his grandchildren and neighbor, Mittie Harley, whom he married. They had two children, Harley Daniel and Eva. Scott repurchased the plantation in 1871, two years before he died. Martha Perry, the widow of Governor Madison Starke Perry, later bought it. Her daughter Sally sold the land in 1883 to William Holdridge and John Dent. They platted the property as Grove Park in 1884. Scott's daughter Emma and her husband Sam Waits purchased the property in 1917. Sam operated a sawmill for the W.B. Phifer Co., a turpentine and sawmill company. The Waits sold the property to the company in 1924. The H.H. Surrency family bought it in 1954 and lived here until 1974. They donated the house and one acre to Alachua County in 2004. The house and its circa 1900 kitchen addition stood here until 2008. The circa 1903 Waits house stands to the west of the Scott home site.