The son of John Earwaker, he was born at Cheetham Hill, Manchester, on 22 April 1847; his father was a merchant from Hampshire, and a close friend of Richard Cobden.

He was elected honorary secretary of the Oxford Archaeological Society, and acted as deputy-keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in 1873–1874, during the residence of the keeper John Henry Parker in Rome.

[1] After his marriage in 1875 Earwaker resided at Withington, near Manchester, and then in 1881 moved to Pensarn, near Abergele, North Wales.

[1] In April 1875 Earwaker began the publication in the Manchester Courier of a series Local Gleanings relating to Lancashire and Cheshire, which ran until January 1878, and then was republished in two volumes.

The first volume of his East Cheshire, Past and Present; or a History of the Hundred of Macclesfield was published in 1877, and the second in 1881.

Earwaker put the Congleton corporation records into admirable order, and work on family papers resulted in monographs, as his Agecroft Hall, near Manchester, and the Old Deeds and Charters relating to it.

The Cheshire portion was purchased by Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster, and presented by him to the Chester Museum.