Brown was born in
Harrisonburg, Virginia, and gained an
A.B. degree from the
University of Nashville in
Tennessee in 1893. He then studied
English literature at the
University of Chicago, where he gained an
M.A. in 1902 and
Ph.D. in 1908. The following year, he was appointed professor of English at
Trinity College in
Durham, North Carolina, where he became known as "Bull" Brown. He wrote a biography of the 17th-century poet and playwright
Elkanah Settle, published in 1910, and as a teacher became noted for his work as an interpreter of
Shakespeare. He was encouraged by
John A. Lomax, president of the
American Folklore Society, to set up the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1913, an organisation of which he was the inaugural president, and later secretary. Over the next thirty years he became the society's principal collector of folk songs and
lore, and traveled around the region, often on summer expeditions to isolated areas, with recording equipment powered by a gasoline generator. Initially he recorded material on an
Ediphone, using
wax cylinders, and later used a Presto machine for recording onto aluminum discs. He took particular note of previously-unwritten ballads and songs, and in 1915 published
Ballad Literature in North Carolina. However, "he was never able to stop collecting long enough to actually assemble his material." The Frank Clyde Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, eventually published after his death, contained seven volumes comprising some 38,000 items including ballads, songs, games, rhymes, beliefs, customs, riddles, proverbs, tales, legends, superstitions, and speech, taken from the southeastern United States, particularly North Carolina, and has been described as "the most imposing monument ever erected in this country to the common memory of the people of any single state." In 1921 Brown was appointed head of the English department at Trinity College. After 1924, he was also involved in administering the foundation of
Duke University, serving as its first
comptroller in 1926, and later as the new university's
marshal. As liaison officer with architects and contractors, he assumed a supervisory role alongside Trinity's President,
William P. Few, and is credited with contributing many ideas to the university's building plans, including its use of the then newly discovered
Hillsborough stone. ==Personal life==