The stateliness which the Greek Revival style could bestow on a 19th century wooden American farmhouse, even one lacking columns, is self-evident in the former Burwell-family homestead at Waverly in Franklin County. The bold, formally proportioned structure is visually dominated by the full entablature surrounding the mass. The house was built in the late 1850s for tobacco planter Armistead L. Burwell and his family. The design and construction are attributed to Seth Richardson, a local builder. Specific details, however, are adapted from designs found in the pattern books of Asher Benjamin, whose works were widely used by Virginia housewrights. The interior woodwork, though plain, shows the hand of an accomplished finish carpenter. Like many of the area’s principal planters, the Burwells operated a factory for the manufacture of plug tobacco. From the 1940s to the 1970s the Burwells maintained a large dairy farm at Waverly.