Memories of my life / by Francis Galton.

  • Galton, Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Memories of my life / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PARENTAGE 5 ceased. He died in 1832, leaving a fortune of some^ ^12,000 a year, of which about a quarter went to each of his three sons, of whom my father was the eldest, and the rest between his three daughters. The Galton family had been Quakers for many generations. They came to Birmingham from Somersetshire, in the time of my great-grandfather, Samuel Galton (i720-1799). Some of its earlier members are buried at Yatton. There is a hamlet in Dorsetshire called Galton, adjacent to Owre Moigne, with which one at least of our name, and apparently a far back relative, was connected many generations ago. My grandmother Galton (1757-1817) was also of Quaker stock, being daughter of Robert Barclay of Ury, a descendant of Robert Barclay (1648-1690) the Apologist, as he used to be named from his work, Barclay's Apology, which, to quote the Dictionary of National Biography, is the standard exposition of the tenets of his sect, of which the essential principle is that all true knowledge comes from divine revelation to the heart of the individual. My grandmother's half-brother, Robert Barclay Allardice (1779-1854), commonly known as Captain Barclay, was a noted athlete and pedestrian, and in later years an active agriculturist. When upwards of seventy years old he was dining at my father's house in Leamington, and on being asked, while sitting at dessert, whether he still performed any feats of strength, he asked my eldest brother, then a fully adult man of more than 12 stone in weight, to step on his hand, which he laid palm upwards on the floor by slightly bending his body. My brother