Darwin–Wedgwood family


The Darwin–Wedgwood family are members of two connected families, each noted for particular prominent 18th-century figures: Erasmus Darwin FRS, a physician and natural philosopher, and Josiah Wedgwood FRS, a noted potter and founder of the eponymous Josiah Wedgwood & Sons pottery company. The Darwin and Wedgwood families were on friendly terms for much of their history and members intermarried, notably Charles Darwin, who married Emma Wedgwood.
The most notable member of the family was Charles Darwin, a grandson of both Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. The family also included at least ten Fellows of the Royal Society, and several artists and poets. Presented below are brief biographical descriptions and genealogical information, and mentions of some notable descendants. The relationship to Francis Galton, and to his immediate ancestors, is also given.

The first generation

Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood was a noted pottery businessman and a friend of Erasmus Darwin. During 1780, on the death of his long-time business partner Thomas Bentley, Josiah asked Darwin for help in managing the business. As a result of the close association that grew up between the Wedgwood and Darwin families, one of Josiah's daughters later married Erasmus's son Robert. One of the children of that marriage, Charles Darwin, also married a Wedgwood – Emma Wedgwood, Josiah's granddaughter. Robert's inheritance of Josiah's money enabled him to fund Charles Darwin's chosen vocation in natural history that resulted in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution. Subsequently, Emma's inheritance made the Darwins a wealthy family.
Josiah Wedgwood married Sarah Wedgwood, and they had seven children, including:
Erasmus Darwin was a physician, botanist and poet from Lichfield, whose lengthy botanical poems gave insights into medicine and natural history, and described an evolutionist theory that anticipated both Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his grandson Charles. He married twice, first during 1757 to Mary Howard, who died from alcohol-induced liver failure aged 30. She gave birth to:
  • Charles Darwin
  • Erasmus Darwin the Younger
  • Elizabeth Darwin, 1763
  • Robert Waring Darwin
  • William Alvey Darwin, 1767
He then had an extra-marital affair with a Miss Parker, producing two daughters:
  • Susanna Parker
  • Mary Parker
He then became smitten with Elizabeth Collier Sacheveral-Pole, who was married to Colonel Sacheveral-Pole and was the natural daughter of the Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore. Sacheveral-Pole died soon afterwards, and Erasmus married Elizabeth and they bore an additional seven children:
  • Edward Darwin
  • Frances Anne Violetta Darwin ; married Samuel Tertius Galton; mother of Francis Galton
  • Emma Georgina Elizabeth Darwin
  • Sir Francis Sacheverel Darwin
  • Rev. John Darwin
  • Henry Darwin
  • Harriot Darwin ; later Harriott Maling.

    Samuel John Galton

FRS was an arms manufacturer from Birmingham. He married Lucy Barclay, daughter of Robert Barclay Allardice, MP, 5th of Urie. They had the eight children:

Robert Darwin (1766–1848)

The son of Erasmus Darwin, Robert Darwin was a noted physician from Shrewsbury, whose own income as a physician, together with astute investment of his wife's inherited wealth, enabled him to fund his son Charles Darwin's place on the Voyage of the Beagle and then gave him the private income needed to support Charles' chosen vocation in natural history that led to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution. He married Susannah Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, and they had the following children.
  • Marianne Darwin, married Henry Parker in 1824.
  • Caroline Sarah Darwin, married Josiah Wedgwood
  • Susan Elizabeth Darwin
  • Erasmus Alvey Darwin
  • Charles Robert Darwin
  • Emily Catherine Darwin, was Charles Langton's second wife.

    Josiah Wedgwood

was the son of the first Josiah Wedgwood, sometime resident of Dorset and they had nine children:
. Pioneer in developing photography, friend and patron of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the pet. Son of Josiah Wedgwood.

Samuel Tertius Galton

married Frances Anne Violetta Darwin, daughter of Erasmus Darwin, [|see above]. They had three sons and four daughters including:
Sir Francis Sacheverel Darwin was the son of Erasmus Darwin and Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of Portmore. Francis was an accomplished travel writer, explorer and naturalist and bravely studied the ravages of the plague on Smyrna at great personal risk. He was the only one to return of his friends who went to the East. A physician to George III, he was knighted by George IV.
On 16 December 1815 he married Jane Harriet Ryle at St. George, Hanover Square London. They had many children including:
  • Mary Jane Darwin, married Charles Carill-Worsley of Platt Hall, near Manchester, in 1840..
  • Frances Sarah Darwin, married Gustavus Barton in 1845, widowed 1846 and remarried to Marcus Huish during 1849. She is the stepmother of the art dealer Marcus Bourne Huish.
  • Edward Levett Darwin, married Harriett Jessopp during 1850. A solicitor in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, Edward Levett Darwin was the author, using the pseudonym "High Elms", of Gameskeeper's Manual, a guide for tending game on large estates which shows keen observation of the habits of various animals.

    The third generation

Charles Darwin

The most prominent member of the family, Charles Darwin, proposed the first coherent theory of evolution by means of natural and sexual selection.
Charles Robert Darwin was a son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood. He married Emma Wedgwood, a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood II and Elizabeth Allen. Charles's mother, Susannah, was a sister to Emma's father, Josiah II. Thus, Charles and Emma were first cousins. Charles' sister Caroline married Emma's brother, Josiah Wedgwood III.
The Darwins had ten children, three of whom died before reaching maturity.

William Darwin Fox

The Rev. William Darwin Fox was a second cousin of Charles Darwin and an amateur entomologist, naturalist and palaeontologist. Fox became a lifelong friend of Charles Darwin after their first meeting at Christ's College, Cambridge. He married Harriet Fletcher, who gave him five children, and after her death married Ellen Sophia Woodd, who provided the remainder of his 17 children.
After his graduation from Cambridge during 1829, Fox was appointed as the Vicar of Osmaston and during 1838 became the Rector of Delamere, a living he retained until his retirement during 1873.

The fourth generation

George Howard Darwin

George Howard Darwin was an astronomer and mathematician. He married Martha du Puy of Philadelphia. They had five children: