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The Darwin — Wedgwood family was a prominent English family, descended from Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin. The family contained at least ten Fellows of the Royal Society and several artists and poets. Presented below are brief biographical sketches and genealogical information with links to articles on the members. The individuals are listed by year of birth and grouped into generations. The relationship to Francis Galton and his immediate ancestors is also given. Note the tree below does not include all descendants (otherwise there would be many hundreds on it).

The first generation

Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) was a noted potter and a friend of Erasmus Darwin; in 1780 on the death of Josiah Wedgwood's long-time business partner Thomas Bentley, Wedgwood turned to his friend Erasmus Darwin for help in running 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' son Robert. One of the children of that marriage, Charles Darwin, also married a Wedgwood — Emma, Josiah's granddaughter. Robert's inheritance of Josiah's money enabled him to fund Charles Darwin's chosen vocation in natural history that led to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution. Subsequently Emma's inheritance made the Darwins a wealthy family.

Josiah Wedgwood married Sarah Wedgwood (1734-1815), and they had seven children:


Erasmus Darwin

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was a physician, botanist and poet from Lichfield, whose lengthy botanical poems gave insights into medicine and natural history, and outlined an evolutionist theory that anticipated both Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his grandson Charles. He married twice, first to Mary Howard 1757, who died in 1770 from alcohol-induced liver failure, aged 31. She gave birth to:

He then had an extra-marital affair with a Miss Parker, producing two daughters:

  • Elizabeth (Bessy) Darwin (8 July 1847–1926); never married and had no descendents.


Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton FRS (1822–1911) made important contributions to statistics and is known as the father of eugenics. He married Louisa Jane Butler, but they had no children.

Other notables from the same period

William Darwin Fox

The Rev. William Darwin Fox (1805-1880) was a second cousin of Charles Darwin and an entomologist, who was a friend of Charles Darwin at Cambridge.

The fourth generation

George Howard Darwin

George Howard Darwin (1845–1912) was an astronomer and mathematician. He married Martha (Maud) du Puy of Philadelphia. They had four children:


Leonard Darwin

Leonard Darwin (1850-1943) was variously an army officer, Member of Parliament and eugenicist who corresponded with Ronald Fisher, thus being the link between the two great evolutionary biologists.

Francis Darwin

Francis Darwin (1848–1925 was the botanist son of Charles Darwin and Emma Darwin (nee Wedgwood). Francis Darwin married Amy Ruck in 1874, who died in 1876 after the birth of their son Bernard Darwin, an author on golf - see below. Francis married Ellen Crofts in 1874 and they had a daughter Frances Crofts, who married and became known as the poet Frances Cornford (see below).

Horace Darwin

Horace Darwin (1851-1928) had the following children:

The fifth generation

Charles Galton Darwin

Charles Galton Darwin 1887-1962 was the son of George Howard Darwin (see above) and was a noted physicist.

Gwen Raverat

Gwen Raverat (nee Darwin) (1885-1957) was the daughter of George Howard Darwin and was an artist. She married the French artist Jacques Raverat in 1911. Her drily amusing childhood memoir, Period Piece, contains illustrations of and anecdotes about many of the Darwin — Wedgwood clan.

Elizabeth Keynes (nee Darwin)

Elizabeth Keynes was the daughter of George Howard Darwin (see above). She married Geoffrey Keynes (see Keynes family) and had sons Richard Keynes and Quentin Keynes.

Bernard Darwin

Bernard Darwin (1876–1961) was a golf writer. He married Elinor Monsell (died 1954) in 1906, and they had a son Robert Vere Darwin (see below.

Frances Cornford

Frances Cornford (nee Darwin).

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), British composer. His maternal grandmother, Caroline Sarah Darwin, was Charles Darwin's older sister, and his maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood III, was the older brother of Darwin's wife Emma.

Nora Barlow (nee Darwin)

Nora Darwin (1885-1989), the daughter of Horace Darwin (see above), married Sir Alan Barlow. She also edited the Autobiography of Charles Darwin (ISBN 0393310698 (hardback) and ISBN 0393004872 (paperback)). They had the following children:

Josiah Wedgwood, 1st Baron Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood (1872-1943), great-great-grandson of Josiah Wedgwood I, was a Liberal and Labour MP, and served in the military during the Second Boer War and the First World War. He was raised to the peerage in 1942.

The sixth generation

Richard Keynes

Professor Richard Keynes FRS (b. 1919) is a British physiologist.

Quentin Keynes

Quentin Keynes (1921-2003) was a bibliophile and explorer.

Robin Darwin

Robert Vere "Robin" Darwin (1910–1974) was an artist.

Horace Barlow

Horace Barlow (b. 1921) was Professor of Physiology, Berkeley, California, USA; Royal Society Research Professor, Physiological Laboratory, Cambridge (1973-87).

John Cornford

John Cornford was a poet.

Camilla Wedgwood

Camilla Wedgwood (1901-1955), Anthropologist, was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, 1st Baron Wedgwood (see above).

Cicely Veronica (CV) Wedgwood

Cicely Veronica Wedgwood (1910-1997), Historian.

Intermarriage

There was a notable history of intermarriage within the family. In the period under discussion, Josiah Wedgwood married his third cousin Sarah Wedgwood; Charles Darwin married his first cousin Emma Wedgwood; his sister, Caroline Darwin, married Emma's brother (and Caroline's first cousin), Josiah Wedgwood III. There were other instances of cousin marriage both up and down the family tree. Cousin marriage was not uncommon in Britain during the 19th century though why is debated: poorer communications, keeping wealth within the family, more opportunity of evaluating a relative of the opposite sex as a suitable marriage partner (unmarried young women of the upper and upper middle classes were closely chaperoned when meeting men outside the family in the 19th century), more security for the woman as she would not be leaving her family (though legal rights for married women increased during the century, as a rule her property became his and she had little legal recourse if he chose to abuse her).

External links

  • http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/3203/Darwin.html

Darwin — Wedgwood family | Family trees

 

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