He also helped build several local railroads, such as the North and West Branch Railway and also owned many coal mines.

He was ordained in 1839 and attended General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in addition to preaching in Columbia County.

[2] He was born to Phineas Waller and Elizabeth Jewett and was descended from early settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

When he was eight years old, his father moved to Oquago, New York, while he and his half-brother Nathan remained in Pennsylvania.

[2] He then went to live with his aunts Rachel and Sally, enabling him to attend the Wilkes-Barre Academy and avoid his mother, who was an alcoholic.

[2][3] Waller attended the Wilkes-Barre Academy and received good grades, despite what historian William M. Ballie called a "prickly" personality.

[3] When he began preaching, his ministry covered all of Columbia County, as well as an area from Danville to the Wyoming Valley.

[2] In addition to preaching at churches, Waller also revived, organized, or founded a number of them.

[2] Waller owned 20 percent (900 acres) of the land in Bloomsburg at various times during his life, which is more than any other person has held in the town to date.

[2] Waller developed a number of community features on this land, including five churches, the Columbia County Courthouse and Jail, and several industries such as the Magee Carpet Company and the Bloomsburg Silk Mills.

He also hired the town engineer Samuel Neyhard to develop Bloomsburg from Fifth Street to the Susquehanna River.

[2] In 1869, Waller purchased 330 acres of land along Fishing Creek from the Bloomsburg Iron Company and for $3000 and later sold it for $19,037.

He sold some land in Mount Pleasant Township for a place to house poor people.

He also made a number of a number of purchases of land near the end of his life, including 93 acres at the confluence of Fishing Creek and Raven Creek in 1890 and 22.5 acres along the Susquehanna River in Scott Township and Bloomsburg in May 1893.

[2] Waller was involved in the process of mining anthracite and owned large tracts of coal-containing land.

In 1837, he invested jointly in an area of coal-containing land in Plymouth Township (now Larksville) with his uncle, Oristus Collins.

Waller gradually bought the coal-containing lots of his siblings until he had close to 250 acres of land with coal in 1872.

In 1878, he purchased 28 acres of coal-mining land in Plymouth Township from Joseph Jaquish's heirs.

[3] Shortly after arriving in Bloomsburg, he organized a singing school and also created a Bible class in 1839.

[2] In 1856, Waller helped convert a classical school into the Bloomsburg Literary Institute and served as one of the nine initial trustees.

Despite resigning from the trustees, he helped conduct the opening ceremony of the institute's new building on April 3, 1867.

[3] Along with John Ramsay, he built First Street in Bloomsburg and sold the lots on it to Welsh immigrants some time before 1847.

He first met Ellmaker while visiting friends in Philadelphia during his time at the Princeton Theological Seminary.

[2] On the day of Waller's funeral, businesses in Bloomsburg closed from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., a unique honor in the town's history.

[7] In his two-column obituary[8] in Bloomsburg's newspaper, it was stated that "No other man has left or probably will leave a greater impression on this community that he [Waller] did".