Although he did not appear to benefit from the formal education he was given in Edinburgh and at Cambridge, Charles amply made up for it with his voyage of exploration on the Beagle. Upon his return to England, he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood on 29 January 1839 at St. Peter's Anglican Church near her home at Maer.
For a few years they lived in London, and then retired to Down House, where Charles worked and studied, with the result that eventually his ideas completely changed the way that scientists now look at the world. Charles Darwin died 19 April 1882 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Erasmus Darwin and Mary Howard
The first famous Darwin was Charles’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), a physician, natural philosopher, poet, and member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a group of intellectuals, industrialists, and natural philosophers who met regularly between 1765 and 1813. He was a close friend of Josiah Wedgwood, whose creativity and dedication to developing pottery and other industries made history in the Industrial Revolution in England.
Erasmus Darwin was born in Elston, near Newark, the son of a lawyer and naturalist. He was educated at Cambridge and at Edinburgh’s medical school, and then settled in Litchfield, where he was a great success as a physician. He became known as well for his verse and scientific pursuits. His first wife, Mary Howard, was the daughter of Charles Howard, a Litchfield solicitor. She was just 17 when they married in 1757.
Erasmus and Mary Howard had five children:
- Charles Darwin (1758-1778) died from an infection while a medical student in Edinburgh
- Erasmus Darwin (1759–1799) unmarried, suicide
- Elizabeth Darwin, 1763 (died as an infant)
- Robert Waring Darwin (1766-1848) married Susannah Wedgwood and became the father of Charles Robert Darwin
- William Alvey Darwin, (1767) (died as an infant)
- Susanna Parker (1772–1856)
- Mary Parker (1774–1859)
- Edward Darwin, (1782–1829)
- Frances Violetta Darwin, (1783–1874); married Samuel Galton
- Emma Georgina Elizabeth Darwin (born 1784)
- Sir Frances Sacheverel Darwin (1786–1859)
- John Darwin (1787–1865)
- Henry Darwin (born 1789)
- Harriot Darwin (1790–1825) married Admiral Thomas James Malling