The early origins of Rhodes can be traced to the mid-1830s and the establishment of the all-male Montgomery Academy on the outskirts of Clarksville, Tennessee. The city's flourishing tobacco market and profitable river port made Clarksville one of the fastest growing cities in the then-western United States and quickly led to calls to turn the modest "log college" into a proper university. In 1848, the Tennessee General Assembly authorized the conveyance of the Academy's property for the establishment of the "Masonic University of Tennessee".