In 1872, with federal funds provided by the Morrill Act of 1862, the Reconstruction-era Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school for boys in Southwest Virginia's rural Montgomery County. That same year, of the adjoining Solitude Farm including the house and several farm buildings on the estate were acquired for $21,250 from Robert Taylor Preston, a son of Governor of Virginia, James Patton Preston. The commonwealth incorporated a new institution on the site, a state-supported land-grant military institute named Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.
