James Anderson Burns (1865–1945), founder of the Oneida Baptist Institute, grew up as the youngest son of a Primitive Baptist preacher in the hills of West Virginia, where he hunted and sold ginseng roots to buy books so he could attend the first school in a nearby settlement. Eager to see and learn more, as a teenager he visited his father's homestead in Clay County, Kentucky, where he was pulled into the violence of defending family honor. Burns survived four years of feuding; after a close call, he had a religious experience that prompted him to stop fighting and resume his studies. With the help of the Baptist Education Society he planned to study first at Denison University and then at a theological school. But after only seven months in the cooperative and peaceful academic atmosphere of Denison's Ohio campus, he felt compelled to create a similar opportunity for his people in Kentucky.
After marrying Martha Sizemore in 1897, Burns taught at Burning Springs College in Owsley County, Kentucky, where he met H. L. McMurray, a Baptist preacher from Kansas. McMurray shared Burns's dream of building a Christian school for mountain children and together they planned to make it a reality. They selected a site in Oneida on a small hill where three small streams converge to form the South Fork of the Kentucky River. The 10-acre (40,000 m2) site in Oneida was donated by Martha "Granny" Hogg, and the Oneida Baptist Institute opened on January 1, 1900.