Biographical Brief
1840 Born in Pennsylvania, moved to Green County, Wisconsin as a teen, and worked as a carpenter.
1865 Returned to Monroe, Wisconsin after serving in the Union Army's 37th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers.
1880 Photographed and carved real and fictional animals for his "cabinet of curiosities" to create
a traveling tent show called the "L.F. Ames Museum of Art".
1923 After his death, the Ames Museum was traded to a Chicago pawnshop for $133.
1933 The Ames family reclaimed the carved menagerie to keep it from being lost or broken up.
2001 Howard Johnson, the artist's grandson, donated the intact boxed museum to the John Michael Kohler
Arts Center where it remains today.