Algernon Sydney Grenfell and Jane Georgiana Hutchinson, was born on the twenty-eighth day of February, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, at Mostyn House School, Parkgate, by Chester, England, of an ancestry which laid a firm foundation for his career and in surroundings which fitted him for it.
Of teachers, there was Dr. Grenfell's paternal grandfather, the Rev. Algernon Grenfell, the second of three brothers, house master at Rugby under Arnold, and a fine classical scholar, whose elder and younger brothers each felt the ancestral call of the sea and became admirals, with brave records of daring and success.