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Death and legacy
Waddel died at "Hopewell", his Louisa County estate near Gordonsville, Virginia, on September 17, 1805, survived by his wife Mary and seven children. His last words were: "Let me die, take the pillow from beneath my head. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

Before his death Waddel ordered all his manuscripts burned, so his eloquence has become a matter of tradition. William Wirt's fictional Letters of a British Spy (1803), may have used Dr. Waddel (then old and infirm) as a character. While questioning the level of artistic license therein, Dr. Waddel's biographer gives a qualified description as follows:

"'Mr. Wirt stated to me that, so far from adding colors to the picture of Dr. Waddel's eloquence, he had fallen below the truth. In person he was tall and erect, his mien was unusually dignified, and his manners graceful and eloquent. Under his preaching, audiences were irresistibly and simultaneously moved, like the wind-shaken forest.'"

In 1871 his body was moved to the yard of the Waddell Memorial Presbyterian Church at Rapidan, Culpeper County, Virginia. His daughter, Janetta Waddel, married the Reverend Archibald Alexander in 1802. His grandson, James Waddel Alexander, wrote a memoir of his grandfather originally published in the Watchman of the South (1846). ].