The Darwin family tree, with the Wedgwoods

The Darwin family tree begins with two friends. Erasmus Darwin was born at Elston in Nottinghamshire in 1731, studied at Cambridge and Edinburgh and settled as a physician at Lichfield.⁶ He was also a poet and an inventor, and his house in the Cathedral Close is now a museum.⁵ His books include Zoonomia.⁶ He married Mary Howard in 1757, and she died in 1770.⁶

Josiah Wedgwood was born at Burslem in 1730 and opened his Etruria works in 1769.¹² On 25 January 1764 he married Sarah Wedgwood, who was his cousin as well as his wife.³ The Darwin–Wedgwood family article calls her his third cousin.¹¹ The two men met with Watt and others at the monthly lunar meetings, and both campaigned for the abolition of slavery.^6,2

The first marriage on the Darwin family tree joined the son of one founder to the daughter of the other. Robert Darwin, a physician in Shrewsbury from 1787, married Susannah Wedgwood on 18 April 1796.¹³ Their six children included Caroline, Erasmus Alvey and Charles.¹³

Her brother Josiah Wedgwood II was a partner at Etruria from 1790 to 1841 and the member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent from 1832.⁴ He and Elizabeth Allen, known as Bessy, lived at Maer Hall in Staffordshire, and Emma was the youngest of their eight children.¹ On the Darwin family tree the cousins stand side by side.

Charles Darwin studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge and sailed on HMS Beagle in 1831.² He married Emma Wedgwood at St Peter’s Church in Maer on 29 January 1839.¹⁴ Emma was his first cousin, since her father was the brother of his mother.¹ Elsewhere on the Darwin family tree his sister Caroline married Emma’s brother Josiah Wedgwood III, another first cousin.¹¹

After a house in Gower Street, Charles bought Down House in Kent in 1842, and they stayed there for the rest of their married lives.¹ He died there on 19 April 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton.² Emma was buried at Downe.¹⁴

The bottom row of the Darwin family tree holds ten children, of whom three died young.² Mary Eleanor and Charles Waring died in infancy, and Anne, called Annie, died at ten.¹ Annie died at Great Malvern in 1851, where her father had taken her for the water cure. Some writers think she had tuberculosis, so the chart gives no cause.¹⁵ Charles Waring died of scarlet fever.⁹

William was a banker in Southampton from 1861.⁷ Henrietta helped her father edit The Descent of Man and published her mother’s letters in 1904.⁸ Elizabeth, known as Bessy, lived with her mother in Cambridge after 1882.^10,1 George became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge.¹⁶ Francis was a botanist who worked with his father.¹⁷ Leonard was a Royal Engineer and a member of Parliament.¹⁸ Horace founded the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company.¹⁹