Henry Pellew was born on 26 April 1828. His father, George Pellew, who was Dean of Norwich, was the third son of Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth, a British admiral who saw action in the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars.
Pellew was educated at Eton College, before studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1850.
He was one of the founders of Keble College, Oxford and served on the Council of the college from its foundation in 1870 until 1873. He was also a magistrate for the county of Middlesex, serving on the boards of various charities, hospitals and schools in and around London. They had three children, of whom only Charles, his eventual heir, survived.
She died in 1869.
In the same year (possibly because of this, suggested his obituary in The Times) he moved to New York City, and later to Washington, District of Columbia He became a naturalised citizen of the United States. Pellew carried on working for various good causes in America, as he had in England, even after his ninetieth birthday. He helped to organise the Bureau of Charities in New York, working with the future President Theodore Roosevelt.
He helped to set up coffee houses for poor people, a free lending library, and night shelters, as well as helping improve housing conditions.
He was President of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and of the Street George Society, an Anglo-American group in New New York He also belonged to the Society for Sanitary Reform and the School Commission.
He helped with the plans for Washington National Cathedral. He attempted to renounce the peerage (the United States Constitution prohibits any "person holding any office of profit or trust under them" from "without the consent of the Congress, accept any title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state") in favour of Charles, but was told by the British Embassy in Washington that this was not possible.
In any event, he preferred to remain known as "Mr Henry Edward Pellew" rather than use the title of Viscount.
