Waddel, Moses, D.D.

a Presbyterian divine, was born in Iredell County, N. C., July 29, 1770. He received a good academic education, graduated at Hampden Sidney College in 1791, and was licensed by Hanover Presbytery of Virginia in May, 1792. He taught school in Columbia County, Ga. (1793-1801); then in Vienna, Abbeyille District, S.C. (1802-1804). He removed to Willington, S. C., in 1804, where he remained until May, 1819, when, having in the previous year been elected president of the University of Georgia, he entered upon the duties of that office. "The effect of his coming to this institution was almost magical; it very soon attained a measure of prosperity altogether unequalled in its previous history." He resigned this position in August, 1829, and then returned to Willingnton. His labors in the ministry he continued six or seven years longer. In September, 1836, he was visited with a stroke of the palsy, which incapacitated him for all active duties. He died July 21, 1840. Dr. Waddel was distinguished as an instructor. "He may be justly considered as the father of classical education in the upper country of South Carolina and Georgia." As a Christian, his character was unexceptionable. He was active and constant in the discharge of his ministerial duties, and he shrank from no labor which his ecclesiastical relations imposed upon him. His style of preaching was plain, simple, and earnest. He published Memoirs of Miss Catharine Elizabeth Smelt (N. Y. 1810, 12mo). It was a highly interesting and popular work, as was indicated by the fact that it passed to a third edition in the United States, and was published twice in Great Britain. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 4:63; Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, s.v.; Memoirs, etc., of S. Grellet (Phila. 1860), 2, 187. (J. L. S.)