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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Wellington Provincial District]
Kember, Henry
Kember, Henry, M.I.A., [unclear: N.Z]., Accountant, Trust and Loan Companies Buildings, Lambton Quay, Wellington. Telephone 827. Bankers, Bank of New South Wales. This business was established as long ago as 1878, since which time Mr. Kember has been well and favourably known se a professional auditor and accountant in the Empire City. He has acted for most of the large Wellington companies, and was called upon by the Government to report on the accounts of the Public Trust Office, and at times reported for the Official Assignee in Bankruptey. Mr. Kember is auditor for the Wellington-Manawatu Railway Company, the Wellington Woollen Company, the United Farmer's Alliance, the Palmerston North Gas Company, the Mohikinui Coal Company, Messrs. Lysaght and Co., and Sharland and Co., Limited. Mr. Kember was prominent in connection with the incorporation of the New Zealand Institute of Accountants, of which he is a member. A native of London, where he received his earlier education at private schools, Mr. Kember was trained for mercantile life in the Metropolis and in Liverpool, in the course of his business visiting France, Spain, Italy, and the United States of America. The breaking out of the War of Secession found him in the Southern States of America with his sympathies wholly Confederate. He as a volunteer attached himself to their cause, actively serving in the field for nearly two years, and was present at the death of his general, Sydney Johnston, at the Battle of Shiloh. Shortly after he joined the Foreign Bureau of the Confederate service, established to facilitate the exchange of cotton for goods otherwise than munitions of war, in which capacity he several times ran the blockade to and from the West Indies, actually landing in New York only in time to hear of the surrender of General Lee and the fall of the Confederacy. Arranging his finance and foreign exchanges, he was one of the first in a position after the war to carry on business in the South Mobile, Alabama. As one of his firm, Kember and George, he arrived in England for the parpose of establishing a branch at Liverpool in 1866, but was overtaken by the financial panic of that year, and stranded by the loss of his whole capital, £30,000. The South being bankrupt, Mr. Kember tried Chicago, but left that city owing to climatic circumstances, and with many men of enterprise but broken fortune, strayed to the Pacific Coast, finding employment on the Gould and Curry Mine, a claim of the Great Cormstock, adjoining that of the Consolidated Virginia, then principally owned by Messrs. Fair, Flood, and Mackay, with whom he was well acquainted. Times of great depression falling upon Virginia City, he moved to the Apachéstricken regions of Arizona, arriving there only a few months before the wonderfully rich deposits of ore were discovered in the claim of the Consolidated Virginia, which elevated most of his Nevada companions to the rank of millionaires. After travelling on many missions between Arizona and England, he finally sailed to his adopted home of New Zealand in the ship “Ocean Mail.” During the whole of his American experience, he preserved his loyalty to the land of his birth, always being armed with his British passport, a document shown to the writer, and bearing the signature of the famous Lord John Russell.