Dr. Moses Waddel (1770-1840), a Presbyterian minister, was one of the most eminent American educators in the 19th century.  His school, the Willington Academy in South Carolina, was labeled by some "the American Eton."

He taught in two frontier academies before founding his first classical academy at age seventeen in Greensboro, Georgia.  Later he moved to South Carolina where he founded the renowned Willington Academy in 1804.  He taught many prominent men including John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford, James Louis Petigru, and Hugh Swinton Legare, before leaving Willington to become president of Franklin College in Athens, Georgia.  He rescued the school from bankruptcy, and during the ten years that he was president, it became the University of Georgia. He resigned in 1829 and returned to Willington where he farmed, preached and taught.

During his fifty year professional career, (including his time at the University of Georgia)  he taught  many young men who were to be the nation's future leaders : two vice Presidents of the U. S., three U. S. Secretaries of War, three Secretaries of State, one Assistant Secretary of War, one U.S. Attorney General, ministers to France, Spain and Russia, one U.S. Supreme Court justice,  11 governors, seven U. S. Senators,  32 members of the House of Representatives, 22 judges, eight college presidents, and 17 editors or authors.  Others were to become ministers, lawyers, bankers, and presidents of railroads.  His superb teaching and rigorous expectations produced a long list of first class citizens.  The contribution he made to the intellectual life of South Carolina and Georgia is indeed, immeasurable.