Soon after the Civil War ended in 1865, Confederate veteran Charles S. Roller began teaching at the Old Stone Church nearby at Ft. Defiance. By 1874 he had founded Augusta Male Academy and incorporated military discipline into its classical curriculum by 1880. Roller renamed it Augusta Military Academy in 1890; it was the first military preparatory school in Virginia. In 1919, the Academy was among the first schools in America to adopt a Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. The Academy’s international reputation for excellence in secondary level military education attracted more than 7,000 students from the United States and abroad before it closed in 1984.