Volume Thirteen - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - Remarkable Connections - Darwin, FitzRoy, Hawkshaw & Wedgwood . . . .

The Wedgwood Family - A remarkable family whose influence extended from industry and design, to science, exploration and engineering.

The Wedgwood Family Connection - From Josiah Wedgwood to Charles Darwin.

The story begins with Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), the pioneering potter and industrialist whose name became synonymous with British manufacturing. More than a century later, his family would be connected with some of the most significant developments in Victorian science and engineering.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was Josiah Wedgwood's grandson. Darwin subsequently married his cousin Emma Wedgwood, bringing the Darwin and Wedgwood families even closer together. Emma was the sister of Godfrey and Cecily Wedgwood, who would later play an important part in the story of the Hawkshaw family.

The connection with Sir John Hawkshaw became particularly significant in the 1860s. On 24th June 1862, during Hawkshaw's presidency of the Institution of Civil Engineers, his eldest daughter Mary Hawkshaw married Godfrey Wedgwood, a great-grandson of Josiah Wedgwood.

Three years later, in October 1865, Hawkshaw's son John Clarke Hawkshaw married Cecily Wedgwood. Thus, by the time Penarth Dock was opening in 1865, the families of Darwin, Wedgwood and Hawkshaw were already closely intertwined.

And this was not simply a connection on paper. The relationship between the families was a personal one ; in 1857, following the death of Hawkshaw's son Oliver, the family's governess was recommended to and relocated to the Darwin household, while Hawkshaw's sons Clarke and Harry spent time at Down House with the Darwins.