The first local school session in Lexington was held in 1849 in the log home of Capt. James Shaw (1808-79), founder of Lexington, then in Burleson County and since 1874 in Lee County. Andrew Neill Lodge No. 138, A.F. & A.M., to which Shaw and other patrons belonged, joined with the newly formed School District No. 9 in 1854 to build a two-story schoolhouse-lodge hall a mile south of town. In 1860 the school became Lexington Male and Female Academy, using the same hall. A frame schoolhouse built in 1892 and one of brick in 1910 came before the present plant, which was begun in 1936 with the high school building.