Because no upper-level schools were present in southwestern Ross County in 1842, a local Presbyterian minister, Hugh Stewart Fullerton, called a meeting to remedy the situation.

Both the members of his congregation and the remaining local residents responded heartily to his proposal; by the end of the year, the present structure had been constructed.

It is a two-story rectangular building of cut limestone,[2] five bays wide on the front and ornamented with a cupola in the middle of the roof.

Students were able to enroll in preparatory and normal departments; included in the curriculum were courses on mathematics, various sciences, and English, all of which were taught from a Christian perspective.

[4] After the academy came under the supervision of the Chillicothe Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in 1859, students pursued a two-year course of instruction and, upon graduation, departed for other schools.