Mr Alfred Armstrong Crocker was born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA on 28 May 1873. He was the son of dental supplies merchant Samuel A. Crocker and the former Lucy Elizabeth Mosher Smith, natives of Ohio and Massachusetts, respectively. He had one sibling, his younger brother Samuel. 

A graduate of Harvard, Crocker was later the manager of his father’s dental supply company, S. A. Crocker & Co. and by 1910 he still lived with his parents at Alpine Place in Cincinnati. He was married on 25 October 1911 to Lyda Constance Cherrington, but their initial plans for their honeymoon were abandoned when Lyda’s mother died in December 1911. 

Alfred and his wife were aboard the Carpathia as first cabin passengers for their belated honeymoon; they were accompanied on the trip by Alfred’s mother, Lucy Crocker. He penned a letter to the Cincinnati Enquirer (published 20 April 1912) in which he described the events of the rescue of the survivors of the Titanic disaster, noting how many of the survivors were unsuitably attired for a night-out in the Atlantic and how the passengers and crew were rallying around two little orphan boys aboard the ship.

Crocker and his wife Lyda remained residents of Cincinnati for the rest of their lives; their son Alfred Armstrong Jr was born in February 1913. 
Alfred Crocker died in Cincinnati on 7 April 1965 and was buried in Flagg Spring Cemetery in Newtown, Ohio.