Beverly Waugh (1789–1858), Methodist clergyman, was a native of Fairfax County. He developed his business skills as a young man managing a store in Middleburg. At the age of fifteen Waugh joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, and by twenty he had been admitted as a preacher in the Baltimore Conference. He was ordained a deacon in 1811 and an elder two years later, and he was secretary of the Baltimore Conference, 1813–28. The General Conference elected Waugh in 1828 to assist Methodist Episcopal book agent John Emory. In 1831 they jointly published an edition of The Works of the Reverend John Wesley, A.M. When Emory entered the episcopacy in 1832, Waugh succeeded him as the denomination’s primary book agent. In that capacity he managed the publishing house in New York City and provided leadership following a devastating fire there in 1836. In May of that year he was elected bishop at a meeting of the General Conference in Cincinnati. As bishop, Waugh contended with rising abolitionist influence. Himself a member of the American Colonization Society, he was determined to keep the church from adopting either a proslavery or an abolitionist stance. When it formally split over the issue in 1845, Waugh remained in Baltimore but sided with the northern faction. He was the church’s senior bishop from 1852 until his death (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Theodore L. Flood and John W. Hamilton, eds., Lives of Methodist Bishops [1882], 225–62; Matthew Simpson, ed., Cyclopædia of Methodism [1878], 903–5; Baltimore Sun, 10 Feb. 1858).