When Emma Wedgwood married Charles Darwin she brought to the marriage an intellectual inheritance very complimentary to his own, for she was brought up in a family that valued the importance of a good education. Both Darwin and Emma had many talented ancestors, and it is not surprising that their own children were very gifted. In addition, their families were part of a rising middleclass of professionals, inventors, merchants, and scholars that grew in the wake of the burgeoning industrial revolution that had its roots in the Midlands of England. Darwin’s father, Robert Darwin, and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, were successful physicia...

Robert Waring Darwin Robert Waring Darwin: 1766 – 1848. Robert Darwin studied medicine at the University of Leyden in Holland and completed his medical studies at Edinburgh, England, in 1786. That autumas he set up as a doctor in Shrewsbury, though he was only 20. His father, Erasmus Darwin, had taken Robert to Shrewsbury and given him 20 pounds to start a medical practice. Erasmus also wrote to friends in Birmingham asking them to recommend Robert to their friends in the Shrewsbury area. Robert was very successful: He was sympathetic and observant and had more than fifty patients within six months. He remained financially successful dur...

Josiah Wedgwood I Josiah Wedgwood I (1730-1795) was the creator of the highly successful Wedgwood Pottery Company. Josiah’s wealth passed to his descendants and some of it eventually became part of the inheritance of Charles Darwin’s wife Emma. This wealth contributed to the estate that made it possible for Charles to pursue his ideas concerning evolution, without concern for money. Josiah was born the second son of Thomas Wedgwood, a pottery business owner. When Josiah was nine, his father died and Josiah's older brother Thomas inherited the business. Although Josiah had limited formal education, he became very skilled at "throwing ...

Charles and Emma were married in early 1839 and had lived on Gower Street in London until July 1842 when they found a house about 16 miles south, in County Kent, near the village of Down. Within the next few years the English postal authorities changed the village’s name to “Downe”, but Darwin, and those who write about him, retain the original spelling of “Down” when referring to the House. Both Emma and Charles had grown up in more rural areas in Shropshire where the air was clean and healthy in comparison to that in London where smoke and soot hung heavy in the air. In addition they were expecting their third child and they wanted to h...

Charles Lyell had become a lifelong friend and promoter of Darwin as a scientist and he lived on Bloomsbury Street in London. So, when Charles completed his work in Cambridge, he moved to London in March 1837, renting rooms in a house on Great Marlborough Street just down the road from his brother Erasmus, who lead a leisurely social life in London but did not accomplish anything significant during his life. The space Charles rented was adequate to house Covington, his trusted assistant, and the remaining boxes of Beagle specimens. At this point Darwin was ready to participate in the scientific life of London and the place that he rented ...

The Beagle docked at Falmouth on October the 2 nd 1836 after its five-year trip around the world, and Darwin left immediately on a coach for Shrewsbury where he arrived late in the evening on October the 4 th. After staying the night at an inn he walked home to The Mount without the family knowing that he was coming. His father and sisters where just sitting down to breakfast when he arrived so, he was greeted with surprise and welcomed home! Even though he had been gone for nearly five years, his dog greeted him as if he had been gone for no more than a day and then headed off in front of him on their usual morning walk. It was only natu...

Before the voyage on the Beagle , Charles Darwin was living an unfocussed life made possible by his family’s wealth. However, his life was dramatically changed during the five-year voyage, where he saw vast numbers of animals and geological formations containing fossils in strata on the sides of mountains that varied in modest ways. These experiences encouraged him to think in new ways about how species came into existence. He was offered the opportunity to sail on the Beagle by his friend Professor Henslow, who sent him a letter from a Cambridge scholar nominating Charles to the position of unpaid naturalist on board the ship. At first C...

It has often been repeated that, as a young boy, Charles Darwin was not a good student or that he was lazy. However, it is apparent that he had a natural inclination towards science and showed an enthusiastic willingness to devote time and effort to it at an early age. In his autobiography he recalls a situation when he was only eight years old and a student at Rev. Case's School that suggests this orientation. “At 8 1/2 years old I went to Mr. Case's School. I remember I took great delight at school in fishing for newts in the quarry pool. I had thus young formed a strong taste for collecting, chiefly seals, franks, etc., but...

Edinburgh University At the tender age of sixteen, Charles was enrolled at Edinburgh University by his father to study medicine and follow in the footsteps of both his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and his father Robert as a physician. To prepare Charles for Edinburgh, Dr. Robert Darwin had spent considerable time with Charles the previous summer, taking him on visits to his patients at the hospital and teaching him the skills he used as a physician. Charles was enthusiastic about what he was learning and Dr. Darwin concluded that Charles would make a very fine physician. At that time, Edinburgh had gained an equal footing with Leiden in Ho...

Dr. Butler’s Shrewsbury School Doctor Butler’s Shrewsbury school was considered a very fine institution at that time. However Charles was not very complementary about what the curriculum there had done for his mind. “In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr. Butler’s great school in Shrewsbury, and remained there for seven years till mid-summer 1825, when I was sixteen years old. Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler’s school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.” Robert Darwin wa...

Charles Robert Darwin was born in the town of Shrewsbury, England on February 12th 1809 and this picturesque, well-maintained medieval town is much the same today as it would have been in Darwin's time. The portion of Shrewsbury known as “Old Town” is almost completely surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped bend in the River Severn, as shown in this aerial view of the town below. The English Bridge is to the lower right and the Kingsland Bridge is to the left while the Welsh Bridge is at the center-top of this photograph. In addition there are foot bridges across the river at several points. The only home that Charles Darwin knew from the t...