It was founded in 1847 in Georgetown, Kentucky, and it later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where it merged with Montgomery Bell Academy in 1867.
The Western Military Institute was founded by Thornton Fitzhugh Johnson in 1847, and initially located in Georgetown, Kentucky.
[1][2] Future Republican politician, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and Presidential Candidate James Blaine was an instructor there in 1850 and 1851.
[1] In 1851, future Confederate General Bushrod Johnson became a professor, and later served as headmaster until the beginning of the American Civil War.
[1] In 1867 the high school instruction of the University of Nashville, previously offered through the Western Military Institute was offered in the newly constituted Montgomery Bell Academy, which was housed in new facilities that are now the campus of the George Peabody College of Teachers at Vanderbilt University.