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Moses Waddel was born in Rowan, now Iredell, County, North Carolina, the son of William and Sarah (Morrow) Waddel, who emigrated from County Down, Ireland, and settled in Rowan County, North Carolina, in 1767. His surname was accented on the first syllable.
He got his elementary schooling in a neighborhood school and received advanced instruction at Clio's Nursery, established by James Hall in 1778. He competed his school education there in 1784. He graduated from Hampden Sydney College in 1791 and later studied theology under Virginia clergymen.
He began to teach pupils in the neighborhood of his home. In 1788 he removed with his parents to Greene County, Georgia, and there opened a school. After receiving his license in May 1792, he preached for a time in the vicinity of Charleston, S. C. , but soon removed to Columbia County, Ga. , and established a school near Appling. While living there, he preached at the Calhoun settlement across the Savannah River, some fifty miles away, in Abbeville District, S. C. In 1801 removed to Vienna, a town on the South Carolina side of the Savannah, and opened another school.
In 1804 he removed to Willington, a community about six miles south of Vienna, and there opened the school that gained and maintained a widespread reputation. The first school house was a two-room log cabin. In 1809 four recitation rooms and a chapel were built. The students studied in log and brick huts about the school house and boarded with neighboring farmers. A monitorial form of student government, which was headed by the master, made for strict discipline. At Willington, between 1804 and 1819, Waddel taught most of those four thousand students that in various places received instruction from him. In addition to large numbers of clergymen, he trained many senators, governors, congressmen, judges, and lawyers. His most distinguished pupils were John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford, Hugh S. Legare, George McDuffie, A. B. Longstreet, and James L. Petigru. In 1818 he published a most tedious religious tract, Memoirs of the Life of Miss Caroline Elizabeth Smelt, which, however, went through several editions. In 1819 he became president of Franklin College (the University of Georgia). He is usually given the credit for building up the student body there and stimulating its religious life. Retiring in 1829, he lived in Willington until 1836, when he returned to Athens following a paralytic stroke.
A. B. Longstreet, in his Master William Mitten, described his Willington teacher as a man of "about five feet nine inches; of stout muscular frame, and a little inclined to corpulency. His head was uncommonly large, and covered with a thick coat of dark hair. His eyes were gray, and over-shadowed by thick, heavy eye-brows, his tout ensemble was extremely austere".
Although some of his pupils thought him cruel and severe, he had an unusual capacity for stimulating in boys a desire to learn.
There he met and in 1795 married Catherine, the sister of his most distinguished pupil, John C. Calhoun. She lived slightly more than a year after their marriage. In 1800 he married Elizabeth Woodson Pleasants of Halifax County, Va. .
