The Preston and Olin Institute was a Methodist academy for boys in Blacksburg, Virginia which operated from 1851 to 1872. They chose the name Preston for Colonel William Ballard Preston, of nearby Smithfield Plantation, a well-known Montgomery County businessman, farmer, and statesman and a nationally known politician. The Methodist Church selected the name Olin after Stephen Olin, a beloved Methodist minister and former president of Randolph-Macon College. Olin and Preston Institute, a school for boys, opened in 1851, with William R. White as principal. The town already had a school for girls: the Blacksburg Female Academy, incorporated by legislative act in 1840. Until it was rechartered in 1869, it was named The Olin and Preston Institute.