Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near West Waverly Waverly, VA

Waverly is an incorporated town in Sussex County, Virginia, and the largest town in the county.

By popular local legend, Waverly got its name when Otelia Mahone, wife of Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad builder William Mahone, named new rail stations from Sir Walter Scott's novels — taking Waverly from the Waverley novels and Ivanhoe.

The Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad through Waverly was completed in 1858, and the town grew up as a railroad and agricultural center on what is now U.S. Route 460.

The 2020 census counted 1,955 people in Waverly, within a total area of about 3.1 square miles.

Census Bureau survey estimates for 2020–2024 put Waverly at about 877 households.

Waverly is home to the First Peanut Museum in the United States, which opened in 1990 behind the Miles B. Carpenter House and celebrates Sussex County's peanut heritage.

According to the museum's account, Waverly-area doctor Matthew Harris grew the first commercial peanut crop in the country in 1842 and wagoned it to market in Petersburg.

The Old Dominion Peanut Company opened in Waverly in 1880 and is described by the museum as the first commercial company to buy, grade, shell and market the peanut.

The Miles B. Carpenter House, a two-story frame dwelling built in 1890 on U.S. Route 460, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 and is now the Miles B. Carpenter Folk Art Museum.

Miles B. Carpenter, a Waverly lumber-mill owner who began wood carving in 1941, became one of America's foremost folk artists, and his sculptures are held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.