Henry Aubrey Strode was born 6 February 1844, in Fredricksburg, Virginia. He enlisted in the Confederate army at age 17 and served throughout the war. Afterward, he studied mathematics and chemistry at the University of Virginia.

In 1872, he purchased property in Amherst County, Virginia and opened Kenmore University High School, a preparatory school for the University of Virginia. While president of the Kenmore school, Strode married Millie Ellis, the daughter of Colonel J.T. Ellis; they had eight children. Under Strode’s leadership, the preparatory school was soon acknowledged as foremost in Virginia. In 1889, he closed the school to become the head of department of mathematics at the University of Mississippi.

In July 1890, following the decline of the offer from General Stephen D. Lee, the Board of Trustees elected Strode the first President of Clemson College. Strode spent most of his presidency planning and supervising the physical construction of a campus, hiring faculty, and creating curriculum and regulations. Priority in construction was given to facilities for the Experiment Station farms and the lab for fertilizer analysis to which existing state programs would be transferred. In addition, Strode oversaw the creation of classroom buildings, shops, and residential as well as support facilities for a faculty and a class estimated at three hundred. The failure of the General Assembly to appropriate funds as well as problems with contractors hindered the building program delayed the opening of the school until 1893. Strode resigned in November 1892 but remained at Clemson as a professor of Mathematics until 1896 when, for reasons of poor health, he was asked to resign. Strode returned to Amherst, Virginia and died there in 1898.