Arthur Pember

Pember was born in 1835 into a wealthy family, the third child and second son of a stockbroker. He grew up in the Brixton Hill and Clapham Park suburbs of London. Educated at home, he did not attend university. In 1857, he joined his father working as a stockbroker in the City of London. In March 1860, he married Elizabeth Hoghton. The newly married couple moved to their own house in Carlton Road, Maida Vale, but Elizabeth died of complications of a miscarriage in December of that same year. Pember remarried in October 1862 to Alice Mary Grieve.

After having given birth to ten children in 14 years, Pember's wife Alice died of typhoid in 1881. She was 36 years old. In May 1884, Pember moved with his five sons from New York to LaMoure, Dakota Territory, in order to become a stock farmer. According to one account, he "was told by his doctor one day that if he did not cease pumping his brains into a daily paper, his heart would soon stop pumping blood into his brains". According to his obituary, on the other hand, the motivation for the move was to "transfer his boys from the temptations of the city to the country". An 1885 newspaper article reported that Pember was writing a book entitled "Twenty Years in New York Journalism".