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Ancient Waverly, when it came into being, was called "Huntingdon," from St. John's Episcopal Church, Huntingdon the community's oldest church, dating from the 1840s. In 1840 the town of Waverly included six buildings all clustered near the 3100 block of York Road: a shoemaker's shop, a corn husk depot, a blacksmith, and three small stone houses. The shoemaker, Jacob Aull, was an immigrant from Bavaria whose sons built the houses in Waverly's first housing boom and whose daughter Louisa became a neighborhood historian. Surrounding this little village, away from York Road, there were still the estates, summer houses, arboretums and horse farms of the affluent.
In 1866, a large parcel of land, much of it previously used for pasture and farming, was bought and divided into lots. New avenues were laid out. More houses were built, as were the first firehouse, the town hall, and finally the Post Office. Obtaining the Post Office led to the change of name to Waverly, after Sir Walter Scott's first novel, Waverley, to avoid confusion with the myriad Huntingdons.
With rural origins and a history as a suburban village, by 1974 Waverly was considered representative of an urban community, and was used as such by the Gallop Poll. Residents of the 900 block of Homestead Street were asked whether Nixon should resign. According to the story, the first residents alerted all the others to be home and answer the door, and soon the President was gone.
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