Old Waverly

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Old Waverly, in San Jacinto County. Now settle in, because this one reaches back a good long ways. Back in the years between 1835 and the 1850s, people were puttin' down roots in this corner of Texas, and most of them were comin' up from Alabama.

They built a community, and when it came time to give it a name, they looked to their bookshelves. The Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott were just about everywhere you looked in those days, popular enough that a whole Texas settlement took the name. That tells you something about the kind of people who settled here.

They were readers. They had ambitions. And they intended to raise their children accordingly.

So in 1854, they founded the Waverly Institute, with separate departments for boys and girls, because the people of Waverly were not interested in anything less than an education equal to any you could find. Out here on the frontier, that was no small statement. The plantation system shaped life in Waverly right up through the 1860s, and then, like everywhere else in the South, the Civil War came and rearranged everything.

Federal troops didn't just pass through, they camped right in the heart of Waverly, on a place folks came to call Soldier's Hill. Three churches once served this community. Three.

Only one of them survived into the present day, the Presbyterian church, which was organized in 1860 and whose current building was erected in 1904. Two congregations didn't make it. One did.

And somehow, that lone church standing there says just about everything you need to know about what time does to even the most ambitious of places. Old Waverly was an early center of culture for this part of Texas. The marker says so.

And the marker is not wrong.

What the marker says

Early center of culture for this part of Texas. Settled 1835-1850's, mainly by people from Alabama. Community was named for the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott, then very popular. To provide education equal to any, Waverly Institute was founded in 1854, with separate departments for boys and girls. Plantation system prevailed until 1860's. During Civil War, Federal troops camped in heart of Waverly, on Soldier's Hill. Of three early churches, only the Presbyterian (organized in 1860) still exists; its present building was erected in 1904. (1969)