Lyman Ward Military Academy was founded in 1898 as the Southern Industrial Institute by Dr. Lyman Ward, a Universalist minister from New York. Ward established the school to educate the poor children of Alabama, many of whom had few opportunities because of the devastation caused by the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction. With donations from the citizens of Camp Hill and assistance from fellow reformers such as Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, he began the school with the goal of preparing young men and women for what he called "the work of life."