Francis Wayland Ayer's ancestors hailed from Norwich, England. His great-grandfather arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 where he founded Newbury and Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Ayer was born on February 4, 1848, in Lee, Massachusetts, to Nathan Wheeler and Joanna B. Ayer. He was named after Dr. Francis Wayland, the president of Brown University, where his father had attended school.

When he was three-years-old, Ayer's mother died. His father remarried three years later to Harriet Post. Ayer's father practiced law, but later quit to teach school. In 1867, he opened a private school for girls in Philadelphia.

Ayer grew up in New York. When he was 14, he was offered a schoolmaster position at a county school near Dundee, New York. He was paid $200 a month and was provided room and board by the families of his students. Normally, the job would have been offered to someone older. However, the Civil War was in its second year, and the older men were fighting in the war. Because of his youth, Ayer found himself teaching children who were his own age and even older. A year later, Ayer began teaching at the Dundee village school. While he was there, enrollment grew from 11 to 70.

With the money he earned from his teaching jobs, Ayer enrolled in the University of Rochester in the Fall of 1867. Unfortunately, Ayer had to quit after one year when his savings were depleted. He returned to Philadelphia in June 1868 and began teaching part time. After only a few weeks of teaching, he accepted a job in advertising sales at the National Baptist.

After a year of advertising sales, Ayer opened N.W. Ayer & Son. Because of Ayer's focus on honest business and hard work, the agency prospered quickly. By the early 1900s, Ayer was able to devote more time to activities outside of the agency.

In addition to owning his own agency, Ayer was director of Merchants National Bank of Philadelphia and became president of the bank in 1895. He became chairman of the board when the bank merged with the First National Bank of Philadelphia.

Ayer and business partner Henry Nelson McKinney joined together outside the agency to raise thoroughbred Jersey cattle. What began as a hobby turned into a million dollar business with the herds being the second largest in the nation.

Although Ayer cam from a Puritan background he was an active Baptist and was extremely religious. When he returned to Philadelphia after dropping out of the University of Rochester, he became a member of the North Baptist Church in Camden, New Jersey, where his parents resided. From then until his death in 1923, Ayer was the church's Sunday school superintendent. In addition to his local position, Ayer served as president of the New Jersey State Baptist Convention and Northern Baptist Convention.

Along with running an agency, serving on various boards, and holding several important community positions, Ayer was both a husband and a father. He married Rhandena Gilman on May 5, 1875. Together, they had two daughters, Alice and Anna. Rhandena died in 1914. Five years after her death, Ayer married Martha K. Lawson on April 21, 1919.

Ayer made his son-in-law, Wilfred Fry, manager of N.W. Ayer & Son in 1916. Fry gained complete control of the agency after Ayer's death on March 5, 1923.

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