According to an obituary in the Western Australian, James Pearce arrived in the Swan River colony in the early 1860s (see note below). He worked initially as a tutor, a Clerk of the Court and then Resident Magistrate. In 1867, Pearce founded the Fremantle Herald newspaper with a Mr Beresford and with the financial support of John Taylor (for whose family Pearce had been tutor).
Pearce wrote regular, satirical columns for the Herald under the name 'Sandalwood Cutter'.
In 1881, Pearce founded the Morning Herald, the first daily paper issued in Western Australia. He sold his interest in this newspaper four years later and lived for a time in the eastern states of Australia. Pearce returned to the West in the mid-1890s and worked with the Perth City Council for about a decade.
Pearce's obituary notes: 'The late Mr. Pearce was a brilliant conversationalist, a man of rare and wide experience, a very attractive personality, and possessing considerable histrionic ability. Some of his old friends will remember his taking part in many dramatic entertainments with the late Mrs. Lyons in the Mechanics Institute Hall in the seventies ... In his later life his old friends meeting Mr. Pearce would be struck by the unassuming subdued personality of the man they had known wielding in earlier times a commanding influence, a man passionately devoted to journalism and keen on moulding public opinion on liberal lines and with an unquenchable desire to promote the good of the country. For a man of his ability he was most modest. He was full of human sympathy and kindness. He never forgot his friends: he forgave his enemies.'
