Farwell Tilden Brown, our founder, is a third generation Ames resident, descended from the two prominent early families reflected in his name.  He has devoted his retirement years to gathering and assembling the history of his community.  His lifetime collection of photographs has been deposited with the Ames Public Library (the Farwell T. Brown Photographic Archive), and many of his personal papers reside in the archives of the Ames Historical Society.  In 1986, Mr. Brown was proclaimed “Official Historian for the City of Ames,” and in 1990 he received the Ames Public Library’s “Trustee Award” for significant contributions to the library and community. The Library’s new auditorium was dedicated in his honor on March 1, 1998.

Mr. Brown has published four books and an untold number of newspaper articles on the history of Ames.  His first book, Ames, the Early Years in Word and Picture (1993), was a collection of fifty-five stories that highlight the community and its people with an emphasis on the first seventy-five years of the town’s life.  In 1999 he published Ames in Word and Picture, Book Two: Further Tales and Personal Memories, with forty-nine additional articles.  The pictorial album Ames, Iowa, A Ride Through Town on the “Dinkey,” in two editions (most recently 2001), remains a popular souvenir volume. His most recent work (2003) is: Ames in Word and Picture, Book Three: Tales from Two Old-timers, in which he includes the writings of his grandfather, Kendrick Wade Brown, in addition to eighteen more stories of his own.

Farwell Brown was born in Ames on December 17, 1910.  He graduated from Ames High School in 1929 and from Iowa State University in 1934 with a major in agricultural economics.  In 1940, he married Ruth Mosher in Urbana, Illinois.  They have four children.  Mr. Brown worked for many years as a real estate appraiser for the Iowa Department of Transportation.  He retired in 1976 during the U.S. Bicentennial celebration, just in time to begin in earnest his second career as a lecturer and writer of local history.

Pictured are the first officers of the Ames Heritage Association: (left to right) Rodney Fox, secretary; Terry Adams, vice-president; and Farwell Brown, president. The three were photographed as they sat in Brown's second-floor office in the building on the southwest corner of Main Street and Kellogg Avenue. They are discussing plans for the moving, restoration, and preservation of the Hoggatt School, the first schoolhouse in Ames and the Heritage Association's first project. This photo was taken at the same time as the photo which appeared on the first page of the Ames Tribune on January 14, 1981.