Amos and Mary Janney, Quakers from Bucks County, PA, settled here about 1733, and others soon followed, forming a manufacturing and commercial center that served the surrounding farmland. By mid-century the village was known as Janney's Mill after its most important enterprise, and it was renamed Waterford about 1780. By 1830, free African Americans headed a quarter of Waterford's households. During the Civil War, most residents opposed slavery and supported the Union. Since the 1930s, local property owners and the Waterford Foundation they established in 1943 have worked to preserve the 18th- and 19th-century village and its rural setting, and the area became a National Historic Landmark district in 1970.