Daniel Leaford Haile, a grandson of Mead Haile b1811, wrote his family history in 1948. This compiler received a copy of that history in 1998. The following account of how the name came to be spelled "Haile" instead of "Hale" is an excerpt from that history.
...Grandfather corresponded with, and on at least one occasion, visited his brother. One feature of the correspondence aroused my curiousity and posed a question. And I asked him one day: "Grandfather, how is it that you address your brother as "Hale", while you and all our family write our name "Haile?" He had an odd little expression he would utter when he was caught "off the beam." So he said, "Tut tue, my son, when I was a lad in Kentucky, in school, I put the "i" in, just to be different." And different it surley has been ever since with our branch of the family.Elsewhere in this piece by Daniel Leaford Haile he states, ..."If I ever knew what state he was born in, I have forgotten now. But we can safely say that it was one of three---Virginia, Kentucky, or Tennessee."
This compiler has tracked the movements of this family and finds no record of their having been in Kentucky. I therefore conclude Mead J Haile attended school in Bedford County Tennessee where evidence is found that his father moved the family from Virginia to Bedford County sometime prior to 1805. Mead J Haile and his siblings are known to have grown to adulthood in Bedford County, TN.
If anyone can provide proof that Mead J Haile was ever in Kentucy, please contact me at coley@flash.net
